Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
July/August 2006

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New limbs for new lives in Anandwan

How I came to help organise a workshop for making orthotics and prosthetics at Anandwan in Central India

by Penny Penton

Retirement and cutting my ties with occupational therapy practice followed a while after my husband was made redun-dant and kept disappearing with a backpack to exciting places. Five years later in September 2004 it was a wonderful surprise to be invited by Donald Sammut to join his surgical team to go and work on the hands of people who had suffered leprosy in India. It felt satisfying to travel with a useful purpose, but I was concerned about meeting a particularly strange disease with all its biblical connotations and whether I had forgotten my skills in idle retirement. I was helped and reassured by friends from the Hand Clinic in Windsor, who had already been there.

Anandwan means 'City of Joy', and was founded over fifty years ago by Muralidhar Devidas, or Baba Amte, with his wife and just six people with leprosy on some barren land near Nagpur in Central India. As a young lawyer with a privileged background, he felt increasingly restless and hungered after a life of meaning. He started by helping the poor farmers establish co-operatives. His involvement with leprosy began one wet evening when walking home from work, he passed a bundle by the roadside and forced himself to deal with the fear that was involved in caring for the man, who was dying of leprosy.

The village now covers about 500 acres, with three lakes, gardens, woodland, irrigated farmland and a wide range of activities, including cobblers, tailors, weaving, carpentry, printing, mechanics and the making of wheelchairs. The food is all home grown and the streets are clean and free of wandering cows. There is a new acute hospital for leprosy, with operating theatres also being built. There are various schools and training workshops for the blind and the deaf, and a youth vocational programme. The elderly are housed in the old wards that were constructed around courtyards. There is a daily wound dressing clinic for those needing wounds cleaned and bandaged before going out to work. There are 2,500 people who have been given a welcome, medical care, a home, food, work. In fact a life of dignity. More than half have had leprosy.

Leprosy is caused by a bacillus similar to that of tuberculosis and affects skin and peripheral nerves. The problem with research is that the bacillus cannot be cultured and the problem with its elimination is that it is hard to detect or prevent. India still has the highest numbers. The damage the disease causes to the nerves in the hands and feet leads them to become damaged, deformed and shortened because of lack of feeling and muscle atrophy. Internal organs and the face and sight may also be affected. Those we were treating had no skin lesions and were no longer infectious. I had the opportunity of seeing some brilliant surgery, using tendon transfer to restore flexion in the ring and little fingers in some cases, and place the thumb back into its natural position in others. We also had a number of serious burn contracture cases to care for. I was surprised how young many of them were and how soon serious deformities become evident. Kate, my physiotherapy colleague, and I were kept busy with the post-operative dressings and splinting in a hectic, good-natured atmosphere, which barely needed an interpreter. It was good to find we could still work so well together, even in extreme and basic conditions.

Among all the activity there was time to get to know the village and the medical staff, and notice the other problems evident in the community. There are many who have had serious accidents, industrial injuries and diseases such as polio, resulting in the need for crutches and wheelchairs. There was no help offered in the way of orthotics and prosthetics for these people. Having found out that there were at least fifty in the community and no service in the region, I felt with my background as an occupational therapist at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, I ought to be able to find out whether something could be done for them.

Many letters, e-mails, phone calls and meetings later we have organised what is going to be something very special for the future of this hard-working community which will serve the people and improve their opportunities in life, as well as bringing in people from outside to have orthotics and prosthetics manufactured on an individual basis, with a valuable assessment of needs and continuing care for the future.

The community are now building it and will run it with the help of Otto Bock, a worldwide leading company in the supply of orthopaedic technology, who have planned it, provided the equipment, and selected a professional prosthetist. Kate Beresford, physiotherapist, and Meryl Glover, occupational therapist, are helping me to raise the £40,000 needed to pay for the equipment and materials for the first year. The Limbless Association is giving the project help with administration and banking procedures, and many Barnes friends have already supported us. If you would like to support this project, please send donations payable to the Limbless Association, c/o Penny Penton, 2 Ullswater Road, Barnes, London SW13 9PJ, or e-mail
Pennypenton@hotmail.com for further information.

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