Our approach to the situation is to first educate trainers from among the local professionals and graduates of the BTPOTC who are currently employees of OTC.

The importance of this project is reflected in the good work that the OTC does for Ghana and the region. Acting as a ‘key partner in health care for persons with physical and mobility disability through the provision of quality, custom-built prosthetic, orthotic, orthopaedic appliances and excellence in rehabilitation services’, OTC makes an important contribution to addressing the needs for P&O services in the region. The primary purpose of the Centre is the rehabilitation of the physically challenged in Ghana including the Greater West Africa region. The centre welcomes over 7000 patients per year a quarter of which are children, many of them with cerebral palsy, who desperately need orthopaedic devices to perform the most basic of daily activities. Without OTC, the outlook would be very grim for those in need.

Like 68 of his countrymen, Peter Courage is a graduate of the local BTPOTC educational program in P&O (counting four generations of graduates since its 2013 inception). Early on the college sought accreditation to an international level but was denied due to the lack of trained teachers and substantial gaps in program’s curriculum. This project is the first step on the path to achieve that level and will help provide future generations of West Africans with world-class P&O products and services.

This first training is one of four to prepare students for taking Associate Prosthetist/Orthotist level exams, a necessary precondition for studying on the BSc level program that we have developed to train high-level trainers and teachers around the world.