The most 'humane' act

Mahatma Gandhi had said, “"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated." And sometimes when you come across people like Tapesh Mathur, it does warm your heart and make you feel that all is not yet lost.

For this Jaipur based veterinarian, taking care of animals comes very naturally. But seeing animals hurt and maimed badly in road accidents truly wrenched his heart. Most of the animals hurt either died or their limbs had to be amputated, which was as good as being dead for the animals. That set him thinking and a year ago, he embarked on developing the perfect artificial support for such unfortunate animals.

His first ‘patient’, named as Krishna, was a three and half year old calf whose limb was amputated after it was hit by a car on Jaipur street. He used HDPE material and some of the accessories used for the grip and comfort to hold the artificial limb in place and it worked well! It was known as, no surprises here, the Krishna Limb. This small, weak calf adapted to its new limb during the two-hour physiotherapy for 15 days at a stretch. And the real joy was seeing the young calf sprint around like an excited child, all over the place with its new limb. The calf now uses the limb 10 to 12 hours at a stretch and relaxes in the night with the limb removed. It’s living like any other healthy animal with an assured longer life span and ready to be a part of the usual production cycle. He now wishes to implant this Krishna Limb for free and help all suffering animals.

This limb can be used by almost any animal as it has the capacity to bear weight of almost 300 kgs. Mathur plans to develop a mobile unit  to reach out to more such injured animals. Cost of the limb? It is very basic at Rs.2000 and hopefully many animal lovers will come together and help fund this truly humanitarian innovation.