DOZENS of medical boots which do wonders for people suffering from club foot have been donated to Papua New Guinea by an East End hospital.
The Royal London, in Whitechapel Road, has handed 66 pairs of specialist Ponseti boots to the developing country.
Once the feet have been corrected through casting, the boots hold each foot in a corrected position.
The method is particularly useful for children under two and the results can be significant and life-lasting.
Club foot is the most common serious deformity affecting children, afflicting one child out of 1,000 in the UK.
In the developing world there are up to six per 1,000.
Overseas disability charity CBM organised the donations.
Orthopaedic surgeon Steve Mannion, who works for the charity, has successfully used the non-surgical Ponseti method in Malawi.
Elly Hares, paediatric physiotherapist at The Royal London said: “We were motivated to donate all our used Ponseti boots as a result of hearing about Steve Mannion’s work with CBM.”
The used boots, worth �44.92 each, would have been sent to landfill.
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