The embryo of Lucy Montoro’s network is 50 years old, and for five decades, the institute, which promotes the rehabilitation of people who have suffered from some kind of limitation of movement, has helped turn patients into employees. This year alone, 260,000 services were provided through the network’s five units in the capital, São Paulo.
It all started half a century ago with the former department of Hospital das Clinicas, later transformed into the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (IMERIA), which served as the standard of care for the creation of the Lucie Montoro Network. It was next to the old Vergueiro favela, in southern São Paulo, a place that over the years became an upper-middle-class neighborhood in central Vila Mariana.
“I had colleagues who said to me: ‘But aren’t you going to stay there?’ Because it was crazy to stay away, because the idea was always that everything good happens there at Dr. Arnaldo (the headquarters of Hospital das Clínicas and the USP School of Medicine). And I realized that it was interesting to leave this center and look at another dimension of care,” says network founder Lucie Montoro, physician and professor Linamara Rizzo Battistella. The specialist says her colleagues thought she was being “detained” in the Vergueiro unit.
The next five decades have shown that tailoring this care to people with physical disabilities, and promoting inclusion, has an impact and brings direct returns to society. The most obvious evidence of this are former patients who during their lives became employees of the same Lucie Montoro network.
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Emria, from the Lucy Montoro network
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Danilo Nascimento, former patient and employee of the Luci Motoro network
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Nail clippers for amputees
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Emria, from the Lucy Montoro network
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Emria, from the Lucy Montoro network
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Danielle Tamashiro, from the Lucy Montoro Network
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Emria, from the Lucy Montoro network
William Cardoso/Metropolis
Danilo Nascimento de Almeida, 36 years old, arrived at the institute at the age of two, which later served as a reference for the creation of the network. At that time, he was a boy who had experienced friends who took care of complications caused by hemophilia.
The joints and thus the motor part are damaged by the disease, causing prolonged bleeding. Elbows, knees and ankles were severely affected, making it difficult to play with other children.
To reduce bleeding, the boy needed to gain muscle mass. He received much more than that, through psychological and other support. “They give you support, a structure that enables you to move forward with your life,” he says. “They made me an orthotic to help reduce the bleeding so I can use it in my daily life,” he said.
Danilo’s involvement with the institute never stopped, but life took him down other paths when he became an adult and started working at a truck assembly plant. When the contract ended, a vacancy appeared in the administrative sector of the Lucy Montoro network. Apply and gain access.
“Today I can give back a little of what this house did for me,” he says. “Because whoever sees my X-rays… the doctors joke, they say I will be in a wheelchair or with a cane. But no. I walk, I do my things.”
In the midst of treatment, Danilo got a friend who followed the same scenario. He was a young resident at the time, who also had hemophilia, and began devoting himself to other people with the same condition.
The feeling of receiving treatment in a place where treatment is done is very rewarding, says Rodrigo Yamamoto, the naturopath in charge of the institute’s hemophilia outpatient clinic. “Being able to help people and treat them the same way I was treated. I repay in some way what I received in the past,” he says.
Rodrigo says being a patient helps to better understand those who suffer from the condition today. “What I’ve already experienced from what the patient is going through right now helps give them the best treatment. I also feel like patients have more confidence because I actually received the same diagnosis they did.”
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The former patients are part of a professional team of 802 people across five units in the capital.
They are people capable of producing assistive technologies, such as orthotics, prosthetics, wheelchairs, bathroom chairs, as well as various tools that help patients achieve independence. An example is nail clippers for amputees, which may seem simple, but they make a difference in the lives of those who need them. Produced using a 3D printer.
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Professor Linamara explains that Emria has always, over the years, served as a vector of transformation in the way public authorities deal with this issue. “Our foundation has played a pioneering role in changing health policies, in the real inclusion of people with disabilities, in changing state strategies, because today it is commonplace to talk about accessibility. When we talk about accessibility, people ask: ‘What do you mean, is it an elevator?’ No, it is much more than that.”
The example also serves abroad, according to the expert. “I think the unified health system is a model of the private system, of the complementary system. What we do is the minimum that they have to offer. And in our region they can’t, right? We do much more than the complementary system.”
For Linamara, Imeria is part of the change that has occurred over the past half-century. “It’s another world design, much better, because you’re bringing different people together, but they’ll be living in the same place, producing together, and helping to build a logic of respect and appreciation. That’s very interesting.”
“I think we have built a success story, because it doesn’t stop here and it doesn’t end with the patient.”