Clear Path Seeks Funding For Cutting Edge Prosthetics System

SEATTLE – Clear Path International and the Seattle-based nonprofit Prosthetics Research Study want to introduce new technology to bring physical mobility a step closer for landmine accident survivors inside Burma.

During the past several years, Prosthetics Research Study has developed the “Transtibial Alignment System,” a collapsible, portable device allowing medics with little training to measure the stump of a landmine amputee and bring the information back to a prosthetics production site. The system was developed with a grant from Physicians Against Landmines of the Center for International Rehabilitation in Chicago.

Since 2001, Clear Path has supported the work of the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, a town on the border with Burma. The clinic serves Burmese refugees who don’t qualify for healthcare in Thailand. Many of them are landmine accident survivors.

With the support of technical advisor and project coordinator Dr. Tao Shen Kwan-Gett, a pediatrician at Virginia Mason in Seattle, Clear Path has sponsored the production of 105 prosthetics for landmine amputees, trained three new prosthetists and started the planning for a 10-bed rehabilitation ward at the sprawling border clinic.

While the current Clear Path-sponsored project at the clinic reaches landmine accident survivors who have escaped the fighting between government and rebel troops in Burma, hundreds of mine amputees inside Burma still go without the use of prosthetics because health care services there are virtually nonexistent. In the past, the Mae Tao clinic has tried to set up health posts in Burma only to have them destroyed in the fighting.

However, ethnic Burmese refugee groups have formed teams of backpacking medics who travel to Burmese communities to dispense simple medical services. Clear Path and PRS now want to introduce the new technology to the mobile teams. The idea is to record the amputees’ stump measurements and skeletal alignment data, and make a plaster cast in the field. When the backpackers return, they would provide the data to the prosthetics shop at the clinic to produce the artificial limbs for delivery to mine survivors on the next trip out.

Eventually, the two organizations want to introduce portable production technology allowing the backpacking teams to make the entire prosthetic in the field. Bringing these services to the doorstep of mine survivors is one of Clear Path’s top priorities. Clear Path uses a similar approach with its survivor assistance services to mine victims in rural parts of central Vietnam and Cambodia.

“Many landmine survivors do not get attention because they can’t even afford to travel to the nearest health station or clinic, let alone pay for the treatment,” said Imbert Matthee, president of Clear Path International. “We want to do everything we can do lower the threshold for mine survivors.”