Last updated: Monday, August 18, 2008

Rotary and the LN-4 Prosthetic Hand
March 28 - April 4, 2007

 

In the spring of 2007 Chau and I escorted a Rotary team of 6 plus us, for a total of 8, to Vietnam. We were merely the tour leaders and organizers of logistics; Michael Mendonca, president of the LN-4 foundation, was the leader of the Vietnam LN-4 Hand Project. The team carried 54 hands and visited three disability centers in three different cities in Vietnam.   All the team members were trained to install LN-4 hands, and we fitted many LN-4 hands during this project. We trained health professionals and volunteers in each location to assemble and fit the LN-4 prosthetic hand on new clients.

This team trained staff and volunteers in three locations, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, and Saigon, to assemble and fit the hands for clients. We fitted 38 hands on new clients and left the remaining hands with the directors of each center we visited, for their future use. We expect to send additional hands by mail and return from time to time to support this effort at each of these centers. We all had a wonderful experience doing this work and the LN-4 was well received by our clients, the staffs and volunteers we worked with, the administrators and even the media in every place we traveled in Vietnam.

Extensive information about the LN-4 prosthetic hand and the history of the project is viewable at www.LN-4.org.

The trip was a wonderful success. I will include photos here soon.