Hope Walks: Freedom from Clubfoot
Pre-production starts on new educational films in partnership with Hope Walks.
Hope Walks operate in 16 low and middle income countries and offer free treatment of clubfoot.
Working across 194 partner clinics, the charity delivers this life-changing service through treatment at health facilities alongside supportive and compassionate care from their network of clubfoot clinic parent advisors.
Parent advisors are core to the successful treatment of clubfoot as they are the main point of contact for affected families, providing support and vital education to parents throughout the treatment process.
This year, Medical Aid Films will be working with Hope Walks to create a number of films for use in the training of parent advisors and for use in clubfoot clinics. The films aim to raise awareness about clubfoot and will inform parents, health workers and parent advisors on the treatment process.
What is clubfoot?
Clubfoot is a congenital deformity which usually twists the feet downward and inward. The most common musculoskeletal birth defect, it is thought to affect 1 in every 800 children worldwide.
Left untreated, clubfoot can become a painful and disabling condition, causing stigma, social exclusion and poverty.
150,000-200,000 babies with clubfoot are born each year
Global Clubfoot Initiative
Can clubfoot be treated?
Clubfoot is treatable.
Where traditional treatment used to be limited to expensive surgical interventions, the simple cost-effective “Ponseti method” can be is delivered as an outpatient with a 95% success rate when correctly administered.
Proper training of health professionals and institutionalisation of the Ponseti method as the standard of care in the country are critical.
The Ponseti Method in Low and Middle Income Countries: Challenges and Lessons Learned, Jose A. Morcuende, Thomas M. Cook
What is the Ponseti Method?
The Ponseti Method is the global “gold standard” of treatment for clubfoot. Most effective for babies and children under 2 years old the Ponseti Method involves an initial corrective phase which includes foot manipulation, a series of casts and tenotomy, followed by a maintenance phase of wearing braces.
Particularly suited to low-resource settings, the Ponseti Method is reliable, low-cost, and is able to be delivered by non-physicians. It can prevent the need for expensive and intrusive surgeries.
To find out more about the work of Hope Walks:
