Chennai: “It felt so great, so fulfilling; seeing those people come in wheelchairs and walk out on the new prosthetic leg”, gushed S. Sandhiya after helping a volunteer fit the prosthetic on a disabled man at the Voluntary Health Centre in Taramani on Saturday.
The young psychology grad from the Women’s Christian College has all the reason to be happy and proud. She was in the group of socially committed students of WCC who raised Rs 2.5 lakh through a cultural show of their Rotaract Club for funding the ‘Walk-India’ project of the Chennai-based Freedom Trust that has already given out free over 1300 free prosthetic limbs over the last 18 months to people disabled by various reasons, such as diabetes, birth defects and accidents.
“The artificial limb gives a disabled person a new lease of life, enabling him or her to be independent again, even support the family and contribute to the society”, said Dr. S Sundar, founder, Freedom Trust.
He said his mission was to take these life-changing services to the remote corners of the country “because these prosthetics are relatively harder and rare in such places due to lack of technicalities”.
“Special camps were organized earlier for taking note of the measurements of artificial limbs and the distributed appliances are customized in accordance to the beneficiaries”, Dr Sundar explained. At the VHS camp on Saturday, 25 beneficiaries of Chennai and Kanchipuram districts received artificial limbs.
