Standup Wheelchairs and How Charitable Organizations Treat the Problem

Handicapped and elderly people who use wheelchairs constitute 2% of the U.S. population, or about 5.2 million people (official information from U.S. Department of Health). Numbers in the millions, for some reason, do not impress people. So, how many people who use wheelchairs are there in the Greater Kansas City area? The answer is about 20,000!

Millions of Americans stay in wheelchairs around the clock; many of them all their life. What happens to their extremities can be seen in the picture at right. Many diseases develop because of a sedentary style of life. Even for healthy people, who walk and stand as a minimum a couple hours per day, it is better to stand than sit. This is why many workstations are designed for work in the standing position, even if that work can be performed in the sitting position.

What is good for healthy people is good for handicapped people also. Numerous medical research studies were conducted that confirmed the health benefits of passive standing for handicapped people, including the reduction of drug dependencies and improvement of feeling and self-esteem. We have information about more than 140 medical studies conducted during more than 40 years that support what was mentioned above.

Legendary actor Christopher Reeves, the first Superman, was paralyzed after an accident a few years ago. Reeves has a heavy-built frame and weighs more than 250 pounds. Even two nurses cannot lift him. Because of this, a special table was designed and built for him. Nurses move Reeves from his bed to this table, fasten him with belts, and slowly turn the table to a vertical position. After many months spent in bed and a wheelchair, moving to a standing position leads to dizziness and a feeling of fear. Even Christopher Reeves went through this.

During the last decade or even the last century, hundreds of standup wheelchairs were invented and built that can help handicapped people spend a few hours each day in a standing position and even to move around and work at the same time.

There is no doubt that passive standing is healthy, but there are many obstacles that must be overcome. First, before any company will manufacture standup wheelchairs (stands), the pre-production notification should be filed and approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Without this neither manufacturing nor sales of stands can be done. However, to get this approval, the FDA requires engagement that the manufacturer will not advertise stands as useful devices for the health of handicapped and elderly people.

Insurance companies pay for the vast majority of medical equipment for home use, including manual and motorized wheelchairs, which cost up to $20,000 each! For stands they pay nothing! Because doctors are insurance oriented, they do not recommend stands.

However, the most significant problem exists inside the families of handicapped people. Everything healthy people are able to do they take for granted. Sick and elderly people can do many things only with great difficulty, and they often ask for help. If many relatives accept dressing the paralyzed individuals and transferring them to a wheelchair as a necessity and are ready to help, they consider bringing them a cup of water, book, magazine, or newspaper as superfluous. Handicapped people must move to do these by themselves, using the bulky wheelchair in a usually furniture-crowded house or apartment.

To move the handicapped to a standing position and back is too much for relatives, and they believe this can be skipped, since many doctors do even not recommend stands, affirming that a correct pose in a wheelchair can solve all problems. We should recognize that to move a handicapped person to a stand and back is a very difficult task if the patient weighs over 120 pounds.

The majority of handicapped people are under deep depression. To move from the wheelchair to sofa and back by themselvesis very difficult for them, and they prefer to stay in the wheelchair for 15-18 hours. The problems with a stand seem so great that they do not even want to listen about stands, fully aware of all their advantages.

All those factors lead to low production quantities of stands manufactured by small companies. Because of this, prices are very high. For instance, the price of a manual stand is up to $3,500; the price of a motorized stand is up to $8000.

Finally, chiefly rich people, who have enough space in their homes and can afford to hire servants to help them move to a stand and back, use stands.

Business is business. Profit-seeking businessmen are not interested in manufacturing low-cost stands, because stands are not probable products even at such high prices.

The only way to help handicapped and elderly people is to manufacture stands by not-for-profit organizations. In this case, it will be feasible to manufacture a manual stands at a price of $600-$700 and motorized stands at $1,200. Moreover, it would be possible to make personalized stands tailored to the specific needs of each customer, because the design and shape of stands parts depends on the customer's personal needs like a custom tailored suit. A not-for-profit organization can collect donations and use them to manufacture stands and sell them at production costs, or even below. It is even possible to donate stands to people if they cannot pay. Experience of this kind already exists. For instance, not-for-profit company Dragon Systems, Inc. developed and now manufacturers dictation and other software for blind people to help them read regular print and dictate on the computer that became possible only because of the not-for-profit status of the mentioned company.

A similar company was founded in 1995 for the development and manufacture of stands. Large articles were published in almost all Sun newspapers, for instance, in The Overland Park SUN's issue dated December 7, 1994. A similar article appeared later in The Kansas City star. A reprint of the mentioned article is pictured on the first page.

Unfortunately, nobody responded to help at that time except one lady. She has a 25 year old handicapped son. She characterized all charitable organizations as TO-DO-NOTHING organizations. In suport, she told a story how many years ago she and a dozen other mothers of handicapped children unsuccessfully tried to convince community leaders to make the entrance to the community center handicapped accessible. At that time there were rails and a turnstile at the entrance.

All charitable organizations to whom we appealed for support have shown no interest to help.

The purpose of the present publication is to excite the curiosity of our readers in this problem that is very important for millions of handicapped and elderly people. This problem is ignored by government, insurance companies, and even charitable organizations that were formed to solve this kind of problem.

Only private people can help now!

Please, send your donations payable to RUS Publishing, Inc., a not-for-profit organization, addressed to:

RUS publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 12127, Overland Park, KS 66282-2127

Please, write on your check "For project WHEELCHAIR."