Cybernic centre offers hope

High-tech: Mohd Mizan (left) and another patient undergoing their Hybrid Assistive Limb Robot Suit rehabilitation sessions at Socso Neuro-Robotics Rehabilitation and Cybernic Centre in Ayer Keroh, Melaka, the country’s first such facility.

MELAKA: After he suffered a fall in August last year, young Mohd Mizan Nazran Mohd Razlan became paraplegic and felt really down.

“I had to be wheelchair-bound and I avoided seeing people.

“I felt depressed and hopeless,” said the Kedahan, 21, who accidentally fell from the 14th floor of a hotel in Penang while on vacation there.

He, however, was given a chance to improve his condition when doctors at government hospitals in Penang and Kedah referred him to the Social Security Organisation’s (Socso) Neuro-Robotics Rehabilita-tion and Cybernic Centre in Ayer Keroh here.

Mohd Mizan, who used to be employed by a handphone dealer, said he could now walk with the help of a crutch after receiving treatment at the centre since

March.

“I am hopeful that my condition will improve further after my rehabilitation ends in 90 days,” he said when met by the media.

Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran, who launched the facility yesterday, said 100 patients or Socso-insured persons, most of whom suffered from spinal injury or stroke, had undergone rehabilitation treatment at the country’s first such centre since November last year.

He said the centre, a collaboration between Socso and Cyberdyne Incorporated Japan, is equipped with state-of-the-art neuro-robotic technology known as the “Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) Robot Suit”.

“It is currently the largest cybernic treatment centre out of Japan, equipped with 24 units of the HAL Robot Suits.

“It is also the fourth centre to be established in the world after Japan, Germany and the United States,” he said at the launch.

Also present were the HAL Robot Suit inventor Professor Dr Yoshiyuki Sankai, who is also Cyberdyne Inc chief executive officer, the ministry’s secretary-general Datuk Amir Omar and Socso chief executive officer Datuk Seri Dr Mohammed Azman Aziz Mohammed.

Kulasegaran urged all government and private doctors who

provide primary care to Socso-insured persons to inform and advise their patients about the early intervention and rehabilitation programmes involving Cyberdyne HAL treatment at the facility, which is housed in the Tun Razak Socso Rehabilitation Centre.

He said this will assist Socso in enabling more workers to return

to work earlier a move that will benefit the workers and their families as well as the country’s economy.

“I also hope Socso can extend the centre’s operating hours beyond 5.30pm to address the long waiting list faced by patients,” he said.