Chronicle Editor
Valencia Ndhlovu, Sunday News Reporter
A 41-year-old Bulawayo man who lost his hand to a mince maker was all smiles yesterday after he received a donation of a prosthetic hand from a Victoria Falls-based organisation that is into assisting amputees.
The amputee, Mr Edmond Chandiwana, described the donation as an intervention from God saying he did not apply for the hand but was fortunate enough to bump into the donor from the Our Pride Amputees Helping Amputees who committed to help him.
“I’m comfortable and happy and the fact that the hand is manual will make work easy especially for my sausage project. I do all types of sausages specifically beef sausages like Russians, barbeque (BBQ) and chakalaka. I will forever be grateful to Mr Khumbulani Sibanda who gave me space to work at his butchery for free,” said Mr Chandiwana.
The organisation that assisted him recognised that amputees had challenges of getting assistive devices, hence they started with the One Shoe project where it registered people from around Zimbabwe.
It has 3 000 beneficiaries from around the country who are in need of shoes, while the areas covered include areas in Matabeleland North Province such as Victoria Falls, Hwange and Binga. The donor, Mr Fedrick Mafira said through networking and experience they had with a boy who was a below knee amputee, they saw that the injured have challenges and needed help.
“Through networking and experience we have with Mr Pride Mafira who is a below knee amputee we saw that these people have challenges and need help. We then launched the One Shoe programme on 21 December 2019 and so far, we have donated 388 pairs of shoes. We launched a helping hand project in Victoria Falls and we have so far assisted nine beneficiaries and this one from Bulawayo is the 10th beneficiary since we launched this project,” he said.
Mr Mafira said they were still in the process of fixing documents then they would do outreach programmes to cover the whole country. He said they were looking at helping 300 people to get an artificial hand especially the above elbow ones from February to March next year.
“Right now, we are focusing on the below the elbow amputees and we will move to above elbow amputees. The hands that are being donated are not computerised but are operated manual and we get them through our partners the German engineers who make them.”
He said the engineers came with this idea after one of the engineer’s wife was involved in an accident and had her hand amputated.
Online Reporter