Pacific Stars & Stripes,
March 11, 1953
Board Plans Help for Paraplegics,Children
Made Orphans In Fighting
By PFC Ray Waterkotte
Tokyo, Mar. 11 (Pac. S&S)-
A six-member American team, here to study the problems of South Korea's
cripples and orphans, left Tokyo airport at 7 a.m. today for a week-long
look at the embattled republic's maimed.
Getting amputees "on their feet again" and instituting
a program for paraplegics-persons paralyzed below the waist-is the
first target for the newly established American-Korean Foundation,
Dr. Howard A. Rusk said yesterday in a news conference here.
Dr. Rusk, who said he had made similar studies
for the United Nations in Austria and Israel, is director of the Institute
of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, New York University-Bellevue
Medical Center.
Stating it was still too early to define the scope
of the problem, Rusk added: "This is not a survey. When we come back,
we'll tell people what we propose to do-action-wise."
The foundation, which already has received a donation
of 15 tons of antibiotics from American laboratories, will hold a
general meeting Apr. 8 to vote on an appropriations program to finance
its activities in Korea.
Comparing the problems of the paraplegics in Korea
to those in the United States after World War I, Rusk said that Korea
has no program yet to rehabilitate soldiers paralyzed below the waist.
The American-Korean Foundation will start one.
Rusk spelled out the immediate aims of the foundation
as: 1) Training Koreans to manufacture and teach the use of artificial
limbs. 2) Start a program to train amputees in some type of work.
3) Institute a program in sedentary handwork for paraplegics. 4) See
what must be done for the country's war orphans.
This rehabilitation program, backed by private
funds, includes both ROK civilians and veterans.
Rusk keynoted the entire program by saying, "We'll
have to translate American techniques into more primitive methods.
We'll have to find equipment that takes the least repair. For example,
we'll have to develop an artificial leg that can stand up in a rice
paddy."
The doctor stated that an American team will probably
go to Korea to work with that country's maimed, while some Koreans
are being trained in the United States. When the South Koreans return,
they will teach other citizens of that country in working with amputees
and paraplegics.
The Rusk mission, the first medical rehabilitation
fact-finders to tour Korea, will be followed by another group this
summer. The second mission will study educational and agricultural
needs of the country, as well as digging up more information on its
health problems.
A non-political, non-sectarian organization, the
American-Korean Foundation was incorporated last September with Dr.
Milton S. Eisenhower as chairman. Dr. Eisenhower, representing the
International Society for the Welfare of Cripples; Dr. Leonard W.
Mayo, executive director of the Association for the Aid of Crippled
Children; Mrs. Bernard F. Gimbel, foundation board member; Eugene
J. Taylor of the National Society of Crippled Children and Adults,
and Palmer Bevis, executive director of the Foundation.
PSS-199
