“The patients are the most grateful patients. It’s a great way to use our talents.”
Photos: Charles Dankmeyer
––Jeff Lutz, CPO
Charles Dankmeyer, CPO, often brings Baltimore Orioles gear for the patients, families, and crew. Volunteers in CRIMAL’s fabrication area.
Back then, Junior Odom, CP(E), Lexington, Kentucky, was among a group of 12 U.S. volunteer prosthetists, led by the late Roy Snelson, CPO(E), in coordination with the Liga International—the League of Flying Doctors—who treated 96 amputees during its first medical mission to the area. One of those patients was a bilateral transtibial orphan boy named Alverez. Treating this child had a profound impact on Odom, and he was moved to start a clinic in Mexico, teaming up with Mexico’s first and only ABC-certified CPO, FAAOP, Arturo Vasquez-Vela, and his brother, Eduardo Vasquez-Vela, an orthopedic surgeon, who also is a former secretary of Health, Civil Society, and Prevention of Accidents. In the immediate years that followed, Romulo O’Farril, Jr., a businessman, and the governor of Queretaro donated land and money to build the CRIMAL clinic, which opened in 1993. 24
O&P Almanac SEPTEMBER 2013
Grateful Patients, Skilled Volunteers Over the past 27 years, CRIMAL’s 75 volunteer prosthetists have fitted more than 2,500 needs-based patients, many of whom travel great distances in rural Mexico to reach the clinic. Today, most of the center’s patients are congenital or trauma cases from farming accidents. Patients are scheduled in advance of the quarterly week-long trips, where each volunteer practitioner treats 10 to 12 patients in five days. “It’s a very busy pace that’s necessary in order to accomplish things in these circumstances because you need to have the hand skills and the ability to do assessments quickly, be able to build, make your own molds, do most of your own fabrication, and these things need to be done within a short time frame,” says Charles Dankmeyer, CPO, CEO of Dankmeyer Inc., Linthicum Heights, Maryland, and vice president of AOPA.
On the sixth day of the mission, the clinic provides an educational symposium for local physicians. The clinic, which in earlier years functioned from a small, second floor apartment requiring patients to be carried up the stairs, today is a full-fledged center that has treatment space and gait labs, and also offers physical and occupation therapy. “The patients are the most grateful patients. It’s a great way to use our talents,” says Jeff Lutz, CPO, central zone vice president, Hanger Clinic, Lafayette, Louisiana. “The patients come in with great hopes and no prosthesis, and they leave with a prosthesis, and down there it makes a difference between being able to make a living or not being able to take care of their families.” Participating practitioners pay for their own airfare and volunteer their time, which sometimes means using up vacation days. All of the materials and components are donated.