In North Carolina, surplus prosthetics, medical equipment to go to Haiti

From The News-Observer:

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- Donors across North Carolina are helping to restore the lives of people injured in Haiti's earthquake by giving, literally, parts of themselves.

Travis Dessoffy (pictured), who runs the Greenville office of Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, will need a U-Haul to deliver all the artificial hands, feet and joints, as well as crutches, canes and walkers, donated so far to help Haiti's amputees. Dessoffy will deliver the items to Physicians for Peace in Norfolk, Va., a nonprofit that will ship them to Haiti.

Hanger is the largest U.S. producer of prosthetic equipment. All the company's 600-plus offices are participating in the limb drive, including those in Raleigh, Cary and Durham.

In addition, members of the N.C. Association for Medical Equipment Services have sent truckloads of goods, including bandages, crutches, wheelchairs and oxygen concentrators to Haiti, according to Beth Bowen, the trade group's spokeswoman in Cary.

An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people have had limbs amputated as a result of crush injuries during the Haiti quake or because of infections that weren't properly tended afterward. Aid groups have planned a new hospital wing for amputees and new production facilities where Haitians will learn to build prosthetics.

It will be weeks or months before the swelling and tenderness have subsided so the injured can be fitted for replacement limbs. Child amputees may have to be fitted many times before they're grown.

In the meantime, Physicians for Peace, working with several other groups, can collect, sort and repair prosthetics that patients in this country no longer want or need. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bars the re-use of prosthetics here, but Haiti has no such rule.

"They'll be happy with anything they get," Dessoffy said.

About 80 percent of the patients he sees in his practice have lost limbs to diabetes, Dessoffy said, and their prostheses range from mechanical, spring-loaded knees to pneumatic, hydraulic hips. Hands and feet may be plain, soft rubber or high-density plastic and carbon graphite. The donor parts vary in skin tone. There are masculine hands, and dainty feet with painted nails.

Dessoffy prefers to fit patients with exactly the prosthetic they need for the activities they perform, whether it's surf fishing or pick-up basketball.

"I'm just making a tool," he said. "If you hand me a nail, I don't want to make a screwdriver."

Specialists working with patients in Haiti will likely lean toward low-tech solutions because those parts will be easier and less costly to maintain.

Even before the earthquake, Physicians for Peace reported that Haiti had 800,000 disabled people, many of whom were treated as outcasts. Physicians for Peace and other agencies are collecting supplies and organizing medical volunteers to set up prosthetic manufacturing operations in Port-au-Prince and at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, 60 miles away. The hospital, undamaged in the quake, will also be the site of a rehabilitation center for amputees.

Ron Sconyers, president and CEO of Physicians for Peace, said a limb replacement gives an amputee two things: hope, and a chance for a normal life.

"The most amazing thing we see is with upper-extremity amputees," Sconyers said. "When they get a prosthetic, the first thing they want to do is hug somebody."

Louis Brown, who runs Hanger's Raleigh office, has so far collected about a half-dozen prosthetic legs to send to Haiti. Brown hopes to get more.

"There's always a change when you put somebody back in a functioning capacity," he said, "and help them to have an independent life."