Limb fitting staff undergo advanced training...Daily Graphic..Pg 47..Thurs..June 26/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho & Christiana Asantewah Wiafe

FIVE workers of the limb fitting unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), are undergoing a two-week on-the-job training on the use of advanced technologies in limb fittings.
The unit, known as the Prothetic and Ortheotics Unit is mainly involved in the replacement of lost limbs with artificial ones.
The training, which is being undertaken by a US-based charity known as ‘Standing With Hope’ will at the end of the training enable the workers to fix at least the limbs of about 50 people who have lost either one or two of their legs through accidents or other means.
As part of the training, the unit has also received prothetic (limb fitting) materials from the organisation which include; four dozens of prothetic feet, dozens of pylons, socket adapters, silicon sleeves and liners, boxes of stockinette, 30 gallons of non-toxic raisens, poly vialyn alcohols (PVAs), life and limb bags, prothetic socks and stockings and a generating plant all worth over $30,000.
The Director of the Prothetic and Ortheotic Unit, Dr Daniel Kodi, who briefed the press in Accra, said the training has become necessary as he and his staff were using conventional methods such as the curving of wood to generate limbs for their clients, a system which he said took about two weeks to complete as compared to the current one which takes two days.
Dr Kodi who is one of the trainees, described the new system which used caste as very simple and said patients were made to pay only 25 per cent of the cost of their fittings.
The leader of the group, Mr. Peter Rosenberger said the organisation, which is a missionary group, has been in existence since 2002, and started operating in Ghana since 2005 by partnering the GHS to give hope to amputees in the country.
He said they work as strategic partners with the GHS where they provide free training on prothetics and also take the opportunity to share the gospel to their clients.
Mr. Rosenberger said to make their work more effective “we need GHS to hire younger workers to be trained”, saying that most of the staff at the unit were advanced in age.
He also called on the GHS to provide them with more organisational tools to aid in their work and also appealed to importers to assist them to import more of the prothetic materials into the country.