How do people use the wheelchairs? How long do they last?
A. People who live in town can use the wheelchair to get around on the street and this is tremendously liberating. We’ve seen villages who regularly loaded the disabled person and his chair into a truck to take them to town so that the person could enjoy a few hours sitting by the roadside watching the hustle and bustle. When we travel to these towns on other business we have many times spotted chairs distributed in past years being used and enjoyed by their recipients. With good maintenance and moderate use, a wheelchair lasts 3-4 years. On occasion we have replaced parts on broken wheelchairs and sometimes the whole chair although it is a difficult choice with so many people who have never even gotten a first chair, let alone a second.
