J1141N Old Legs Tour Zimbabwe

The Situation

Our pensioners, a generation that built Zimbabwe; the doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers and yes, mainly ordinary working-class people have had their pensions, their life savings, their wealth and their dignity eroded and reduced to nothing through hyper-inflation and economic hardships. They struggle to afford decent medical attention. The Old Legs Tour Trust seeks to provide a safety net to those pensioners in Zimbabwe unable to afford medical treatments needed, focusing especially on surgical interventions, like orthopaedic interventions like hip and knee replacements. The Old Legs Tour Trust believes that surgical interventions for the elderly are a human right, not a lifetime investment that you have to save your whole life for. That might sound overly dramatic, but it is not. Currently in Zimbabwe, depending on prosthetics and circumstances, a knee replacement will cost between $6000 and $9000 American. Typically, those pensioners lucky enough to receive a pension will receive monthly stipends equivalent to $18. And many pensioners received no stipend at all. So, the lucky ones would have to save every cent received for 500 months to pay for the op, whilst the unlucky ones would have to save forever. Sitting, often for years, in constant bone-on-bone pain, knowing that you will never be able to afford relief, must constitute the worst purgatory imaginable. 

The Objectives

To contribute to improved mental, emotional and physical health of vulnerable old age pensioners in Zimbabwe through the provision of advanced medical care. 

• To fund as many life-changing surgeries for pensioners (hip & knee replacements, eye, hernias etc) as possible