India Clubfoot Project

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

Hope you're enjoying the summer! Can't believe it's already August... I

don't post as much but read the posts. My daughter, " big " Zoe was just

released from the shoes and bar. She is now 3 1/4. Our third doctor is Dr.

Herzenberg in Baltimore.

I learned from the info. shared on this list that of the 100,000 children

born with clubfoot world wide annually, only about 20,000 children receive

any treatment at all. Absolutely unacceptable. Since India has the majority

of clubfoot births at approximately 28,000 per year not receiving treatment,

I wanted to try and do something to help and learned last July about a

project starting in India.

Since there are many new people on the list, I thought I would post an

update of sorts about Dr. Pirani's work in India training doctors and

setting up clinics to treat children with clubfoot.

He and Dr. Harold van Bosse from NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases are working

with an organization based in New York City called A Leg to Stand On

(www.altso.org). One of my college classmates, Mead Welles, started A Leg to

Stand On 2 years ago. Initially, their focus was providing prosthetic limbs

to children who had lost limbs in accidents or been born without a limb.

Once they opened the clinic in the world's largest hospital in Asia, they

saw a lot of children with clubfoot and connected with Dr. Pirani to have

him set up a clubfoot clinic, train doctors and help to establish more

clinics throughout India.

I came up with the idea of creating an alphabet book and notecards to

solicit donations to help support this project. For more details, checkout

the website: www.wilkinswebsites.com/AlphabetMats.php

At this point, I have made $3,000 which is how much it cost to print 500

books and notecards. So, now any donations I receive for books and notecards

will go directly to A Leg to Stand On. If you feel so moved and would like

to contribute, you can do so at the ALTSO website (www.altso.org) via paypal

with a credit card. Just let me know that you made a donation, and I will

send you a book and a set of notecards.

Those of you who live in the NYC area and are looking for a fun night out,

check out the ALTSO fundraiser " Hedge Funds Rocktoberfest " at Planet

Hollywood this fall. More details at:

http://altso.org/rocktoberfest.htm

I went to the first Hedge Funds event at Serena's, and it was a blast! (I

took the photos that are on the rocktoberfest webpage...) Mead started a

hedge fund a few years ago (www.octagon.com) and while he was traveling he

saw many children without limbs begging in the streets. As a result, he

started A Leg to Stand On with Dr. Patel (the father of another classmate of

ours), chief of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the summer!

Joanne Walton, Fairfax VA

mom to Zoe, 3-25-01 (right clubfoot)

www.geocities.com/joannewalton2003/clubfootstory.html

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