Therdchai Jivacate - Innovations

Innovations

After observing that amputees living in the remote borderlands of Thailand were among the least likely to obtain proper prosthetic limbs, Jivacate formed field clinics—that is, organized teams of specialized personnel and volunteers who manufacture prosthetic limbs in mobile workshops. The process is completed within six days; every day 150 to 300 people acquire new prosthetic limbs. Since 1992, Jivacate has organized nearly 100 mobile workshop missions including missions in Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar, the workshops of some of which eventually became permanent satellite ones. These workshops are equipped, and their technicians (many of whom are also amputees) are trained, by the Prostheses Foundation. These activities have also been expanded in Aceh, Indonesia. As of 2010, the mobile units have provided service to about fourteen thousand patients, made seventeen thousand new prosthetic legs, and repaired two thousand artificial legs.

In 2009 Jivacate used a modified version of the Centre for Rehabilitation casting system to fabricate a prosthetic leg for Baby Mosha, a female elephant whose leg had been amputated after she had stepped on a landmine in 2006, when she was 7 months old. The process was featured in a documentary film titled The Eyes of Thailand directed by Windy Borman.