The latest batch of 340 aluminium elbow crutches, 4 paediatric crutches, 4 walking sticks, 4 leg braces and a pneumatic ankle boot, with a total value when new in excess of £4.5k were all checked for reliability, packed and despatched at the end of July 2008 to the New Steps Rehabilitation Centre at Waterloo just outside Freetown, Sierra Leone.
New Steps was built by the medical charity Mercy Ships, at the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone to treat people who had suffered amputations at the hands of the rebels during the war, and those who had suffered from polio, which had again become endemic in the country during the war. (Thankfully, Sierra Leone is once again polio free because of an immunisation programme sponsored by Rotary and backed by the World Health Organisation, which aims to eradicate polio from the world in the next few years.)
This is the 4th shipment of walking aids the Rotary Club of Dronfield has sent to Sierra Leone and they make a tremendous difference to peoples’ lives, giving them mobility, enabling them to find work and to support their families, where previously they had been a burden. Another spin off was that last year the World’s first one legged International Football Tournament was organised in the national stadium in Freetown between 4 west African countries.