Details for record No: 59
CR 0380: Phnom Penh’s Component Factory & CR 0381: Battambang’s Prosthetic Workshop

These two films demonstrate the technical aspects of manufacturing polypropylene components of prostheses and their use in Cambodia. The orthopedic program of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Cambodia got under way in 1991, when the ICRC set up a polypropylene component factory in Phnom Penh. The components are dispatched to the ICRC prosthetic workshop in Battambang, near the most heavily mined area of the country, and to workshop run by other organizations involved in the physical rehabilitation of mine victims.
From its long experience in war-affected countries, the ICRC knew that high-quality materials such as wood, leather or metal where expensive and often hard to obtain locally; in many countries they had to be imported. In 1988 the ICRC therefore decided to start manufacturing prostheses from polypropylene, a material which has many advantages: it is cheap, recyclable, easy to obtain and to store.

Pages Updated On: 9-Mar-2005 - 09:34:53
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