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Download Appropriate Prosthetics and Orthotics Technologies in Low Income Countries (2000-2010) (pdf, 1.6mb)

Education and Training of Prosthetics-Orthotics Professionals

Funding Period: September 2008 – September 2013

Implementing Partner: International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO)

Amount: $3,682,862

Purpose: Facilitate the rehabilitation of people with physical disabilities in developing countries.

Objectives

• Award scholarships for education and training for 110 persons in the profession of prosthetics and/or orthotics. Scholarships will be broken down into thirty-two Category I Prosthetic and Orthotics Professionals (prosthetists-orthotists) and seventy-eight Category II Prosthetics and Orthotic Professionals (orthopedic technologists). The project actively recruits women and people with disabilities to participate in the program.
• Gauge and document the impact of the above-mentioned educational programs on people who have received services from P&O professionals whose training was facilitated by ISPO. ISPO will use community-based workers to follow up on treatment cases to ensure that orthopedic devices are working properly and in good repair.
• Work in partnership with the World Health Organization on its global campaign to foster the integration of prosthetics and orthotics with community-based rehabilitation and to enhance P&O service provision and accessibility worldwide.

War Victims Fund technical advisor, Mel Stills, a certified prosthetist/orthotist, looks on as an orthotic technician takes measurements for a young boy to receive an orthotic device. Photo courtesy of Rob Horvath.

The International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) is a multidisciplinary organization comprising people with professional interest in the clinical, educational, and research aspects of prosthetics, orthotics, rehabilitation engineering, and related topics. ISPO has more than 2,500 members in some eighty nations around the globe; its permanent secretariat is in Brussels, Belgium.

USAID’s support for ISPO through the Leahy War Victims Fund began in 1995 with a grant for a conference on appropriate prosthetic technology. The conference brought together more than 100 rehabilitation experts who discussed how best to use resources and measure effectiveness in developing country programs. The conclusions and recommendations reached at that conference set standards used around the world today.

Since the project's inception, the LWVF and ISPO have collaborated on several interrelated projects. The organizations evaluated and field-tested commonly used prosthetic and orthotic (P&O) technologies and techniques, developed protocols and tools to measure the costs of rehabilitation, and monitored and evaluated programs. The results of that body of work enable the LWVF to better analyze project funding requests and evaluate the impact of its programming.