August 1st: Bharat Vikas Vikalanga Parishad & NIMS

After Akhila picked us up from the airport, we drove around Hyderabad for an hour and a half. We finally made it to the Oyster Suites, our hotel during our Hyderabad stay. We had about an hour to get changed and unpacked and eat some breakfast. And then off to the races!

Our first stop was an NGO called Bharat Vikas Vikalanga Parishad. This group works on giving prosthetics to amputees (mostly due to road accidents). This group is able to provides these prosthetics at 1000 ruppees per patient (that's just over 16 USD!) The organization provides all of these services for free and depends upon donations. They showed us the equipment they use for the shaping of the low cost prosthetics. We even met two patients who had just been fit and we were able to photograph the first time a man had walked since getting his leg amputated 8 months ago (he had had a tumor in his leg).

Placing his leg in the prosthetic for the first time

When the prosthetic didn't fit exactly right, they showed us how they could easily cut it down so that it was right for him. The whole process only took 3 hours.

Practicing walking

After we left Bharat, we went right over to a hospital called NIMS. We met with an orthopedic surgeon, and his team, who had done a lost of work on developing ultra-low cost prosthetics for victims of polio. He was very impressed by everything Jason had to show him and was eager to coordinate clinical trials for the knee.

While none of this was directly helpful for my neonatal hypothermia project, it was still useful to ask questions about local manufacturing and advertising strategies. Tomorrow is supposed to be much more geared towards my project, which is exciting.

In the meantime we are all struggling to stay awake. I took advantage of our lovely room service to get some curd (yogurt) and masala tea (which I have been addicted to since last August in Nepal).

Some of us have been able to stay awake more successfully than others.....

Fiona "reading her book"