Jaipur Foot: India's gift to Iraq

BAGHDAD: “Heel first, heel first... don’t just walk... run with me,’’ Jaipur Foot founder D R Mehta asks a boy with his newly-fitted prosthetic limb at a camp in the war-ravaged Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Tears well up in the eyes of the boy’s mother as she jumps with joy: “He has walked for the first time in four years.’’ Dozens others at the camp, including hardened soldiers in battle fatigues who lost their limbs in the war, start clapping and shouting to buck up the boy.

Mehta (72) has been camping in Baghdad along with volunteers of his Bhagwan Mahavir Viklang Sahayata Samiti since March 17 and has given scores of people a new lease of life by fitting them with artificial limbs. Mehta promises to give 1,000 Iraqis a chance to walk again. The Samiti volunteers have earlier given succour to thousands of people across several war-ravaged countries — Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and even Pakistan.

“Within the first week of the camp, more than 300 Iraqis walked home on new limbs, as the process of fitting an amputee with a Jaipur Foot takes only a day,’’ said Mehta. Amputees from even Iraq’s remotest corners poured in and waited patiently for prosthetic experts from Hind (India) to take measurements of what is left of their limbs and fashion a new leg of fibre and steel.

“The victims told us that other agencies take up to a year to give them a new limb. Here it costs nothing and a man who was on a wheelchair in the morning, walks home in the evening,’’ said Natwarlal Prajapati, himself an amputee and a Samiti volunteer for two decades.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5753258.cms