A trio of graduates in humanitarian logistics management has turned an academic thesis into a working social enterprise by providing amputee victims of war or natural disaster with low-cost prosthetic legs.
The idea of providing improved prosthetics at low cost in countries where strife and poverty create an urgent need for such services came when the inventor, Mohammad Ismail, worked with rehabilitation charities in Ethiopia, Iraq and Sudan.
He partnered with fellow students Paulo Gonçalves and Roberto Agosta at the University of Lugano to found SwissLeg. They produce an innovative high-mobility solution at a fraction of the cost of alternatives.
SwissLeg prosthetics are manufactured from readily available, inexpensive materials to enable comfortable below or above-knee limbs to be made in just three hours, allowing amputees to get fitted and back on their feet in a single consultation.
Responding to the Syrian refugee crisis in 2013, SwissLeg opened its first manufacturing centre in Irbid, north Jordan, and has since fitted 50 prosthetic limbs.
The plan is to open eight more centres across the Middle East, Africa and Asia over the next five years and – working with existing rehabilitation providers – to manufacture and fit at least 9,000 prostheses.
Of 32 million amputees worldwide, just 5% in the developing world have a prosthesis fitted, say the founders – mainly due to prohibitive costs. SwissLeg's solution not only makes prosthetics affordable, it aims to create centres that are owned and managed locally and can be run by newly trained prosthetist and orthotist technicians from within the community.
Each centre will employ up to 15 people and provide opportunities for thousands of amputees to lead productive lives. The centres will act as local hubs from which to reach neighbouring countries in need of a similar service.
Lynn Beavis is part of the wordworks network
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