Dr. Do's Clinic

Hanoi, Vietnam - In an non-descript section of greater Hanoi, down a long alley you can find a small miracle workers shop dedicated to changing lives. When Dr. Do retired from a long and distinguished career as a maker of orthopedic devices for handicapped people, he chose not to retire. He turned the first floor of his home into a clinic where he regularly sees children in need of prosthetic devices. Dr. Do’s patients are the poor children of Hanoi. He knows by name, more than 1,000 children in Hanoi who need prosthetic devices but whose families cannot afford them. Dr. Do is systematically working his way through that list with the goal in mind of providing the needed devices to the children free of charge to them or their families. UniReach helped fund the establishment of Dr. Do’s clinic, the oven for curing plastic, cast saws and numerous other tools. They continues to support the clinic by purchasing the materials needed to construct the devices for the children and teen-agers. The average cost per device is around $125 with the most costly ones at about $250. Meeting Dr. Do and seeing the work he is doing among the limbless poor in Hanoi made me think about the last time I spent $125 for something that perhaps I didn’t need.