La Paz Clinic
Our 2024 Fall Clinic ran from November 3rd through the 13th at our facility in La Paz, B.C.S. It was again sponsored by the La Balandra Rotary Club,
and they provided rooms and breakfast for us at the Catedral Hotel along with lunches at the clinic each day. Our facility has expanded into an
administrative office, 3 rooms for casting, measuring, fitting, and gait training, a large 3 room fabrication area, and a large storehouse room for
supplies, parts, and components.
We had an outstanding group of volunteers, including myself, Garth Knapp CPO, Kirk Douglas’s CPO(e), Brad Farrow CPO(e), Louise Farrow (retired
Registered Physical Therapist), Sandra Kutz (organizational skills beyond compare), Jim Thompson (technician extraordinaire) and his daughter Donna
Thompson Anderson, Hanna North, (another excellent prosthetic technician), Christian Santuario (a below knee amputee and former patient from Los Cabos
who has become an excellent technician, learning over the last several years), Victor Jimenez (a Physical Therapist from La Paz who has been training
to fit children’s leg braces and do major prosthetic repairs). Victor has been a critical component in the fittings , repairs, and alignment of
prostheses, and has been able to see and do repairs on multiple patients during the months between clinic (usually held in the spring and fall). Also
participating in the clinic were Dr. Alejandro Aguirre Chavez (specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation), Daniel (an above knee amputee who
came over from mainland Mexico to get a prosthesis and ended up helping in the lab for the entire clinic), Brianda Rios (a volunteer who has come over
from mainland Nayarit for the past 3 clinics), and lastly and probably most importantly Beatriz Alverde Unger, who is “La Jefa” and acts as
gatekeeper and manages this well run project. In addition, the Rotarians lent us the support of several exchange students to help sort and stack
supplies in an orderly fashion. They were from as far away as Belgium, France, Sweden, and Germany.
This clinic provided 19 new lower limb prostheses of which 7 were below knee and 12 were above knee. 2 children’s AFO’s (aka below knee or short
leg braces) were adjusted to fit a little girl by Victor, and an overall count of 96 patient visits occurred, mostly for maintenance, adjustments, and
repairs such as replacing broken feet, knee units, providing new liners, stump socks, etc. All in all it was one of the best and most productive
clinics we’ve held since 2005!
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