miraclefeet

Our partner in India, Santosh, told us this story about a miraclefeet patient. 

Rehmat Mohammad and Shakila after their marriage migrated to Mumbai from a remote village in Uttar Pradesh in search of some job opportunities to sustain their life. Since they couldn’t find enough resource to support their lives in Mumbai city, they opted to further move to a place near Thane, which is an emerging satellite industrial township adjacent to Mumbai.

 Rahmat works as a weaver whereas Shakila apart from being a busy home maker works making ‘decoration articles’ at home.

 Their first four children born were girls. Rehmat and Shkila wanted to keep trying until they had a boy. Their fifth child was a boy but was born with hearing and speech impairment.  They decided to go for one more child and this time they got a boy with clubfoot, Juaid Rehmat. Thinking Juaid Rehmat could not lead a normal life, they decided to go for another child and this seventh child is now 5 months old.

 This family initially took Juaid Rehmat Ansari to a hospital in Mumbai for clubfoot treatment and couldn’t successfully complete the treatment. But they came to know that miraclefeet, in partnership with CURE, has established a weekly clubfoot clinic at the nearest government/public district hospital in Bhivandi and they resumed non-surgical treatment. Life of this nine-member family in a one-room house is a challenge but they all are happy that little Rehmat is saved from life time disability.

 There are over 230 children like Rehmat who are successfully getting free treatment in 12 weekly clubfoot clinics located at public hospitals in Maharashtra, a state that has 113 M population and has an estimate of ten children born with clubfoot every day!

A representative from Clarks Shoes, leading shoe manufacturer and retailer, is visiting our Mumbai clinics this week to learn more about clubfoot treatment in India.  He visited this family who have a young child with clubfoot being treated in a miraclefeet-funded clinic.  As you can see from the photo, they live in a basic house and have a lot of children to take care of. In an area where parents often have trouble providing basic necessities for children that are perfectly healthy, having a child with a disability can be devastating.  Clubfoot often goes untreated because families simply cannot afford treatment.  The child becomes a social and economic burden.  Often he or she cannot attend school because they cannot get there. The child is not valued because he or she can only perform basic chores and has little hope of being a contributing member of society.  In addition, families who have children with disabilities can be ostracized because their child is considered “cursed,” so these children are hidden away and spend much of their time in solitude. 

Providing free treatment to children like this one, gives families a renewed hope that their child will lead healthy and productive lives.  His parents are proud to show him off to the community and look forward to their child’s future.   miraclefeet’s work goes well beyond just treating clubfoot.  We restore dignity, hope and transform the trajectory of the life of a child and often the entire family.

Celebrate Mother’s Day with miraclefeet When miraclefeet was at the May 2011 training at Wadia Hospital, Mumbai, we were surprised to see so many mothers accompanied by men bringing their children for treatment.  When we asked about this we were told, ”Oh no, these are not the fathers.  These are probably the mother’s brothers or some other relative.  When a woman gives birth to a deformed child it is very normal for the mother and child to be rejected from the house and sent back to her own family in disgrace.”

No wonder the mothers looked so scared. Not only did they have a child who was likely to be disabled on their hands, but they had also lost their security, their future and their support.  Their lives were literally ruined by giving birth to a child with clubfoot. No wonder also that the look of fear, changed to a look of utter joy and relief, often accompanied by tears, when told that their child would be fine.  Their child would walk, run and be able to live a normal life with a relatively easy and low cost treatment.

Treating children with clubfoot doesn’t just transform a child’s life, it also transforms the mother’s life – especially in India.  This Mother’s Day, consider giving a gift to miraclefeet in your mother’s honor and help a mother in need.

miraclefeet Partners with Stanford d.school

This year miraclefeet is partnering with a course at Stanford University called “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” in an effort to develop a novel, affordable brace for children with clubfoot.  The “Extreme Affordability” course, which is housed at the Stanford University Hasso Plattner Institute for Design (aka ‘the d.school’), brings together students from the graduate and professional schools at Stanford University to design affordable products and services for low-income consumers around the world. Previous students in the course have worked on 80 projects in 22 countries with 17 partners over the past nine years.

In the countries where miraclefeet currently works, braces cost upwards of $100.  Although doctors advise parents to start saving for their brace when they apply the first cast, when the child is ready for their brace, the family is still unable to purchase it and drop out of treatment.  In miraclefeet clinics, braces are provided via a brace bank - a child is given a brace and they bring it back and exchange it for a larger brace as they outgrow them.  Braces are currently acquired via donation or imported from countries where they are produced for a lower cost, but there is still no sustainable and affordable option for braces.  The d.school students are examining the bracing problem from medical, engineering, and business perspectives.

Here’s how the d.school describes Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability:

“Designers and engineers have tired of making products that only serve a tiny fraction of the world’s population. Businesspeople are working to leverage the power of business models to do good in the world. Philanthropists are looking for ways make charity more sustainable. And social entrepreneurs all over the globe are experimenting with innovative ways to do their job better.

Lots of individual want to help the poor, but we believe that problems like poverty, disease, and hunger are so big and complicated that no single kind of person has all the necessary tools. The really innovative solutions are discovered-and implemented-through radical collaboration between diverse individuals from different backgrounds, disciplines, and cultures. We help these innovators rally around a common design process, appreciate cultural contexts, develop deep empathy, prototype and iterate ideas rapidly, and sometimes reframe the problem entirely. It’s not long before unexpected ideas begin to take shape.

What’s our mission? To treat the poor as customers, not as charity recipients.

We believe in listening to the needs the poor tell us about, not assuming we know best. We believe in products and services designed for specific cultural contexts, not just Western hand-me-downs. And we believe that careful attention to design can create innovative-and extremely affordable-solutions to the problems of the other 90%.”

Two multi-disciplinary teams, made up graduate students in medicine, business, engineering, and materials science, will be working with miraclefeet to create a low-cost and effective brace that can be used by clubfoot clinics around the world.  We’ll be sure to post updates as the students do their field research in Brazil in late May.

You can learn about the d.school at http://extreme.stanford.edu/ .