AID FOR AMPUTEES

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 9

AID FOR AMPUTEES

Project Short Of Funds

A New Zealand-sponsored project to give artificial limbs to Korean patients who have had major amputations, has run . into finan-. cial difficulties, after considerable progress had been made.

This was reported to the Mission of Lepers in New Zealand by Mr C. Morrison, of the Korean Church World Service, who is the former general secretary of C.0.R.5.0. in New Zealand and Mr J. Steensma, who is in charge of the project. The project was begun in 1962 with a grant of £lOOO from the jubilee gifts fund of the Mission to Lepers. “Although 30 or 40 amputees have been put on their feet again, the funds allotted have been all spent,” said the mission’s secretary for New Zealand (the Rev. M. Feist);

“However, trusting the money can be found, it is proposed that the new Church' World Service Amputee Centre allot one of its six patient dormitories for the use of special leprosy cases selected by the mission’s senior doctor in Korea, Dr. G. Wilson,” Mr Feist said. The artificial limbs are being made by leprosy patients, whose training in this work is part of their occupational therapy and rehabilitation.

Mr Steensma, the director of the project, is a double amputee.