GOI provide artificial feet & knees to about 1000 SL Tamils, who lost their limbs in the bloody civil war that ended in 2009!As a gesture of goodwill!

Indian team to provide artificial limbs to 1,000 war casualties in Vavuniya
by S Venkat Narayan
Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, March 11: An Indian team of 19 highly skilled technicians arrived in Colombo today on its way to Vavuniya, where it will provide artificial feet and knees to about a thousand Sri Lankan Tamils, who lost their limbs in the bloody civil war that ended in May last year.

The team from the Jaipur-based Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is led by Dr AB Sharma. It will hold a month-long humanitarian camp at Vavuniya from March 12 to April 10 to help rehabilitate those who lost their limbs by providing them with what have come to be known across the world as "Jaipur Foot" and Jaipur Knee" free of cost.

The team is being sent by the Government of India as a gesture of goodwill.

The camp will be located close to the camps in Vavuniya in the Northern Province, where some 70,000 civil war-hit internally displaced Sri Lankan Tamils are living at the moment.

D.R Mehta, the founder and the chief patron of the BMVSS, said in Jaipur today that, so far the BMVSS has fitted more than 370,000 artificial limbs and more than three hundred thousand calipers to the war-wounded in various parts of the world. On an average, the BMVSS provides 20,000 artificial limbs to those who have lost them in wars, thus giving them a chance to walk again smoothly.

The mobility acquired through the artificial limbs helps them to change their lives and earn their livelihood.

Mehta said the Jaipur Foot fitment has been provided to victims of landmines and others in foreign countries. So far, the BMVSS has conducted 36 camps in various parts of the world, particularly those countries that witnessed wars in which thousand of people became disabled.

The countries where people who lost their limbs in civil wars and other calamities have been fitted with the famous artificial limbs from Jaipur include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Somalia, Lebanon, Nigeria, and the Philippines among others.


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