We have all read and heard so much in the past few days of the bed shortages occurring at the National Referral Hospital and, today, the measures adopted at the hospital for two waiting areas where discharged patients might stay until family members or friends arrive to take them home.
I believe such arrangements are a first step in relieving some of the reported congestion in the Emergency and Accident Department.
I am writing this letter on another aspect of the NRH’s work and a subject which has occupied my thoughts and wishes for a very long time, the needs of amputees and the re-establishment of a Rehabilitation Workshop in place of the one that was demolished some considerable time ago after it fell into disuse through white ant and termite infestation.
Readers will know that a portable building was gifted to the NRH, after an appeal I made, by the Executive of the SFA but it has sat unused since its delivery last September. The building was donated to be used as a new Rehabilitation Workshop where amputees, and there are several hundred already, awaiting a prosthetic leg to return their mobility and independence they once enjoyed before getting diabetes and having undergone surgery.
Well, the good news I was given today, is that next week work will begin to site the building on a sound footing and once all the ground work and electrical installation is completed the facility will be ready in about a month to function as a workshop.
I very much hope that once that occurs limbless ex-patients of the NRH will start to get artificial limbs made and custom fitted.
My partner charity in New Zealand, ‘Take My Hands’ (TMH) has offered help with artificial limbs and possibly with the fitting of them, possibly also, with tools and equipment with aid from several Limbless Associations in New Zealand in association with TMH.
I am greatly pleased that ultimately I have such good news to share and I will be eager to learn of progress and to be able to give further assistance to the project and to all those who have had to wait for so long, even years in some cases, to have a limb made and fitted.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
