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Making life light for the polio-affected in Thailand

— Photo: Special arrangement

A. Sivathanu Pillai, CEO and Managing Director of BrahMos Aerospace Limited, explaining about the callipers to Thailand government officials in Bangkok.

CHENNAI: After transforming the lives of about 20,000 physically handicapped/polio-affected persons including children in India, the lightweight callipers, jointly designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Hyderabad, are all set to put a pep in the steps of thousands of polio-afflicted persons in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

In Bangkok, a flower-seller’s business has boomed after she was fitted with this India-made, lightweight callipers as she is able to move from place to place. Hitherto, she was confined to her shop, sitting on a chair. Weighing more than two kg, the callipers she wore on one of the legs was a drag.

It cost Rs. 13,000. Moreover, she had to pay 50 per cent of her earnings to the shopowner and that drained her finances.

Now she wears the lightweight callipers made by the Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India (ALIMCO), a public sector undertaking at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Weighing just about 500 gm and costing Rs. 800, the callipers are a spin-off from the carbon-carbon composite material used in the airframe and nose of Agni missiles. This carbon-carbon composite reduced the weight of the callipers from more than three kg.

A team of DRDO personnel and NIMS doctors, headed by A. Sivathanu Pillai, CEO and Managing Director of BrahMos Aerospace Limited, was in Bangkok in the first week of November. The NIMS doctors trained their counterparts working in a hospital for physically handicapped persons in Bangkok, and Thailand’s Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn showed a personal interest in that hospital. The team, which went to Bangkok on invitation, met the Thailand Defence Minister.

As a first step, several persons including the flower-seller were fitted with the ALIMCO-made callipers. She told Dr. Pillai: “This callipers are so simple and convenient. I am thrilled that I can move about without straining myself.” And she surprised the Minister, walking towards him with ease.

(When the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam headed the DRDO, B.N. Prasad of the NIMS asked him whether defence technologies could be used in making polio appliances. Mr. Kalam thought of DRDO scientist Rohini Devi’s work on composites used in the fabrication of missile airframes, which were light in weight and strong. A team of DRDO scientists and the NIMS studied the problem and developed the lightweight callipers, using the composite material.

The design was standardised, which led to mass production of this Standard Modular Floor Reaction Orthosis (SMFRO) by ALIMCO. The SMFRO is a walking aid for patients whose lower limbs are affected).

The DRDO-NIMS team has trained doctors in Bangkok in fitting polio-affected people with callipers from India. “Camps will be held in Thailand and several hundreds will be fitted with these callipers. We will be supplying these callipers to polio-affected people in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam,” Dr. Pillai said.

A polio-affected woman from Coimbatore told him how this calliper changed her life. “I could never bend down and lift my child. With these callipers you have given me, I can bend down, lift my child and hug him.”

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