Archive for the ‘News’ Category

The U.N. Development Programme estimates that less than 1 percent of the need for wheelchairs in developing countries is met by local production, partly because small workshops can’t exploit economies of scale to be profitable. Moreover, the wheelchairs that are available aren’t designed for people who must push themselves over rough roads and muddy walking paths often encountered in the Third World. As a result, millions of people must rely on others to carry them or be stranded inside their homes.

What is needed is an affordable device that can carry users comfortably and efficiently off-road, but is also small and maneuverable enough to use indoors. Amos Winter, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, along with a team of undergraduates and international design collaborators, has designed such a device, which he describes as performing like a combination of a desk chair and a mountain bike — “something you can comfortably sit in all day and maneuver around the office, but also use to efficiently commute to and from work.” Constructed from widely available, cheap bicycle parts, the Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) features two large levers attached to a bicycle drivetrain that helps the chair power through mud and over rocky paths.

Winter recently returned from East Africa, where he spent three weeks in January surveying six disabled people who had tested prototypes of the LFC. Using feedback from the four-month trial, as well as a $50,000 grant he recently received from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Winter is currently tweaking the LFC design in anticipation of advancing it to large-scale production, which would provide local manufacturers with the tools to produce 500 to 1,000 units per month.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 20 million people in developing countries require wheelchairs; Winter estimates that 70 percent of those people live in rural areas where regular wheelchairs simply don’t work. He has been studying the problem of wheelchair production in Third World countries since the summer of 2005, when he traveled to Tanzania on a public-service fellowship and saw firsthand how wheelchairs that rely on hand-rim propulsion are too difficult to use on rough terrain and for long-distance travel. He also learned that hand-powered tricycles are too big to use indoors and usually have only one gear. His solution “for people who grew up in a village where they were literally dragging themselves to school” is the LFC.

By pushing two levers located on each side of the LFC, a user can change mechanical advantage by simply moving hand position in order to go fast on flat ground or to produce enough torque to travel over sand or through mud. The removable levers hook into a bicycle drivetrain that has been converted to work on a wheelchair and is made entirely of bicycle parts that can be found throughout the developing world. This means that the LFC can be made and repaired anywhere one has access to a hacksaw, welder, drill and vice.

Freedom to move around

Winter has been developing the design ever since the concept won the MIT IDEAS Competition in 2008, partly in conjunction with a wheelchair design class he teaches at MIT’s Mobility Lab. Winter founded this lab in 2007 so MIT students could collaborate with local manufacturers and experts from the developed world to produce mobility aid technologies.

One of those experts is Matt McCambridge, a designer for Whirlwind Wheelchair International, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that produces durable, low-cost wheelchairs in developing countries.

McCambridge likes the simplicity of the LFC design, but says he has been most impressed with the intentionally slow, methodical implementation of the LFC. He praised Winter for conducting user testing early, “rather than inventing something in the lab, then using donor money to make thousands of them and forcing them on disabled people who really have no option but to smile and say, ‘thank you.’ ” McCambridge believes that Winter’s process should produce solid results that grow slowly.

The implementation began last summer, when Winter launched his first trial in East Africa with collaboration from the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya. He and Mario Bollini ‘09, Danielle DeLatte ‘11, Benjamin Judge ‘11 and Harrison O’Hanley ‘11, spent a month in Kenya building eight prototypes of the LFC. Each chair cost slightly less than $200 to make, which Winter said is roughly the price of a regular wheelchair in Kenya. Weighing about 65 pounds, or five to 10 pounds more than a regular wheelchair, the LFC was customized for the trial participants, who range in age and live near varied terrain in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Winter returned to Africa with MIT senior Tish Scolnik four months later to interview the participants and test the efficiency of the LFC for each user.

What they learned from the “phenomenal feedback” is that although the LFC is more efficient than a regular wheelchair for plowing through mud and over big stones, it is still too wide and heavy. Winter will make the chair lighter by lowering the seat four inches and shifting the wheels back two inches, which will eliminate the need for the bulky mounting brackets that are currently used to attach the rear wheels to the chair.

‘My little angel machine’

In addition to reducing the width and weight, Winter will focus on improving the LFC for indoor use so that it functions just as well as a normal wheelchair when the levers are removed. He uses the desk chair/mountain bike analogy to describe how the LFC is intended to be used all day. Although someone might spend many hours each day sitting in a desk chair, it would be horrible to use that chair to commute to work, especially if the commute involved dirt roads. Similarly, while the mountain bike would be great for the commute, it would be awkward and uncomfortable to sit on all day at the office. “What we have now is an LFC that is great off-road and is comfortable to sit on, but is still too big to comfortably use indoors,” Winter said.

With the trial results, guidance from manufacturing collaborators and help from a group from his design class, Winter will use the IADB grant to design a new prototype and produce about 30 chairs for another trial that will begin in August in Guatemala. One crucial goal of the trip is to develop the manufacturing equipment that will be used to build the chairs for large-scale production, which Winter hopes will begin in 2011.

Until then, he continues to review the feedback from the East African users, including Abdullah Munish, a Tanzanian spinal injury survivor who lives in a hilly town with rough roads and who has tested various wheelchairs over the past decade. Munish said that in terms of capability and functionality, the LFC is “number one” compared to other wheelchairs.

“It is strong and stable in African terrain, and you can travel long distances and uphill without using too much energy,” he told Winter. “I would say that we have [a] life saver … I just call it my little angel machine.”

One where you’re down and out and nothing is going your way…

A day where everything seems to go wrong… you get a parking ticket, get in an argument with your partner, or get scolded at work.

We all have those days… and sometimes we let them affect our positive vibrations more than we should.

So today, I’d like to share an extremely inspiring Youtube vid, that will stir up deep emotions inside of you and really put things into perspective.

It’s a good reminder that even when you think things are going really bad, they could always be worse, and we should instead show gratitude for the things we DO have and not
focus on being disappointed by what we DON’T have.

This vid has definitely touched my heart (and brought about a few happy tears) and I hope it touches you in the same way too.

Matthew wants to play hide and seek with his 5-year-old brother, Noah. He wants to see the birds he hears in the trees and the firetrucks that zoom past his house with their sirens on. But he has to wait for someone to carry him to the door to look outside and by then it’s too late. The birds and firetrucks won’t wait.

Matthew Davidopoulos of Lowell (USA) is a typical toddler in so many ways. He’s smart and talkative and curious and bursting to do all that he can. He loves to color and paint and play with his iPad and watch movies (“Cars’’ is his favorite). He has dark blond hair and perfect baby teeth and bright blue eyes. It’s having spinal muscular atrophy that separates him from most kids his age. It’s being unable to sit or stand or walk or dress himself or even stamp his foot when he gets angry. He was diagnosed with SMA when he was 8 months old, a week before Christmas. Doctors told his parents, Courtney and Paul, not only that Matthew had a degenerative muscle disease but that he would not live to be 2. They were given a Do Not Resuscitate form to fill out. Matthew is 2 ½ now, and his life is not easy, it’s HIS life. Every night his parents hook him up to a feeding tube to provide the nutrients he needs but cannot get by eating normally.

Every morning they use a machine to clear congestion in his chest that accumulates overnight. Then they bathe and dress him and get him ready for the day. They carry him downstairs, where he has to wear a special vest for about 20 minutes to further loosen congestion. Then he is strapped into a “stander’’ for two to three hours of weight-bearing pressure on his legs. Three times a week, he has physical therapy, once a week he has playtherapy and aquatherapy, and once a week he goes to a playgroup with typical kids. All this, and he is a happy child.

What Matthew needs now to progress and to participate in life, to mingle with friends, to play hide and seek with his brother, to be able to move around a room – is a POWER WHEELCHAIR. But MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, has twice denied the family’s request for a power chair. The rejections baffle the family and all of Matthew’s caregivers, not only because “Matthew’s condition will not change but he will always need a power chair’’ his mother explains. “But also because our primary insurance agreed to pay 90% of the $23,000 cost’’

The Davidopouloses need MassHealth to sign on not only because they don’t have the 10 percent, but also because the agency would be the insurer responsible for repairs. Among the letters the family submitted to MassHealth was documentation stating that Matthew had driven a power chair around the hallways of a rehab hospital and around other patients and people. To deprive young Mathew of the chance to enjoy life as best he can given his circumstances seems too cruel to even think about. Imagine holding this young boy in your arms and giving him a hug, then slip a $5 or $10 in his mothers hand towards his wheelchair.

Frankly it only needs a few generous folk with compassion to meet this need. WILL YOU BE ONE OF THEM? MAKE A DONATION today and give something, even if only $1. The doctors thought predicted Mathew would be dead six months ago! We’ve all heard stories like that before and gone on to see the patients defy the odds and live to experience a fulfilling life for years to come. To hear Mathew’s story brings tears to my eyes and I sincerely hope you will not let this appeal pass you by. I know times are tough but PLEASE, for mathews sake, take action now and donate whatever you can. God bless you!

Our condolences to the family of a severely disabled woman who has died after she fell from a harbour wall while strappedinto her electric whelchair.

Dorset Police said the woman, aged 20 and from Solihull in the West Midlands, was on the historic Cobb in Lyme Regis, Dorset, at around 12.45pm on Friday with her family waiting to take a charter boat cruise.

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