World Rehabilitation Fund Announces South American Bracing Courses
President Howard A. Rusk, M.D., of the World Rehabilitation Fund, has announced that two four-month courses to train bracemakers in Brazil will follow a similar course begun in Lima, Peru, in July. This first course was sponsored by the World Rehabilitation Fund in cooperation with a number of other agencies, and is training personnel for the newly activated brace shops at the Central Military Hospital and the Hermanos Hospitalarios San Juan de Dios.
The two successive courses in Brazil will be held in Sao Paulo starting in January, 1962, in the facilities of the newly completed Children's Rehabilitation Center of the Associacao de Assistencia a Crinanca Defeituosa (Association for the Aid of Crippled Children). The latter, the "Easter Seal Agency of Brazil" is an affiliate of the International Society for Rehabilitation.
The two courses in Brazil are part of a project being partially financed by "counterpart" funds by the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The project includes manufacture for the first time in Brazil of prefabricated components for braces. (Manufacture of prefabricated brace components in Peru is scheduled to begin in 1962 under the sponsorship of the Patronato Peruano de Rehabilitacion y Educacion Especial—Peruvian Committee for Rehabilitation and Special Education.)
Technical director of the courses will be Mr. Juan Monros, a Spaniard, who has recently completed four years of training in prosthetics and orthotics at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York University Medical Center; Institute for the Crippled and Disabled; New York Regional Office, Veterans Administration; and Prosthetics School, New York University Medical Center. Mr. Monros, a professional soccer player, received his training under a fellowship from the World Rehabilitation Fund.
Instructional staff for the courses in Brazil will also include a brace-maker, Mr. Manuel Tavares de Sousa, and a prosthetist, Mr. Casmiro Carlos, from Portugal. Both Mr. de Sousa and Mr. Carlos recently completed two and one-half years of training in the United States at the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; Newington Crippled Children's Hospital, Newington, Conn.; Rancho los Amigos, Downey, Calif.; Veterans Administration Regional Office, New York City: U.S. Naval Hospital, Oakland, Calif., and the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York University Medical Center.
Enroute to Peru, Mr. Monros will spend ten days in Haiti instructing the orthotics staff of St. Vincent's School for the Handicapped, Port-au-Prince, in the use of new power machinery recently supplied the school by C.A.R.E. He will also make short consultation and instructional visits to brace shops in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cost Rica and Panama working with physicians and other personnel who have had training at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York Unversity Medical Center, under fellowships from the World Rehabilitation Fund.
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