NWPB Weekly News Now
Community Spotlight: SIGN Fracture Care International
Special | 3m 3sVideo has Closed Captions
NWPB Weekly News Now community spotlight with SIGN Fracture Care International
Tracci Dial catches up with the team from SIGN Fracture Care International in the Tri-Cities to learn more about their life saving work around the world.
NWPB Weekly News Now is a local public television program presented by NWPB
NWPB Weekly News Now
Community Spotlight: SIGN Fracture Care International
Special | 3m 3sVideo has Closed Captions
Tracci Dial catches up with the team from SIGN Fracture Care International in the Tri-Cities to learn more about their life saving work around the world.
How to Watch NWPB Weekly News Now
NWPB Weekly News Now is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipNWPB here, with a sneak peek of an upcoming community spotlight, this time we're going inside SIGN Fracture Care International.
It's a Tri-Cities based nonprofit making a huge impact.
- Our mission is to provide US level orthopedic care to the poorest patients in what's called lower and middle income countries used to be called developing countries.
We've been doing that successfully for 25 years now.
We've treated close to 440,000 patients.
We should make 450 by the end of this year.
We've done it with very dedicated people here at SIGN.
- These are patients that have been injured in typically road traffic accidents.
So maybe they're a pedestrian, a bicycle rider or a motorcycle rider, and they've, you know, they break their femur or tibia.
So both of your leg bones, or humerus.
And so we provide implants for the surgeons to treat those patients, orthopedic trauma patients.
- What's the outcome otherwise if they didnt have tools such as these?
- You know, well, one, they don't they can't afford... A lot of the patients cannot afford the surgery or the implant.
And so they would just be, probably crippled, right?
So they would go on to heal, maybe not naturally.
But then they would be disabled.
- Together, we've been able to use our, our unique skills, each of us, to help surgeons in developing countries, equip them with the right kind of implants and the right kind of education to be able to treat patients the day they arrive in their hospital.
A friend of ours, Biruk... Dr. Biruk from Ethiopia is going to talk to you about what an impact we had in Ethiopia.
But that impact, I call it...
It was called disruptive technology.
We brought this SIGN Nail to these countries that had nothing, and patients can't afford to buy it, so we give it for free and give them the training for free.
And then they might have, the day before we gave it to them, been thinking about moving to another country, or going into a different profession because their hospital couldn't afford to buy the products they needed to treat their patients.
They were no better than what's called a bone setter.
A bone setter just brings in a patient, puts on salve or cast or something, and the patient stays in their sort of hospital for months and then comes out unrepaired, you know, incomplete as a person.
And these doctors are now able to, every day, save limbs and then save lives.
Stay tuned here and find us online at NWPB.org, on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook for that full story coming soon.
NWPB Weekly News Now is a local public television program presented by NWPB