Daniel Omar lost his arms in March 2012 when he
was 14 years old during a bombing carried out by Sudanese aircraft,
a part of the government’s attempt to
quell rebels. Omar hid behind a tree to avoid the bomb, but
when the explosion subsided both his hands were gone. The
Guardian
reports, “Aware of the burden he would place on his family, in
2012 Omar told a Time reporter that he would rather have died when
the government’s Antonov aircraft dropped its lethal
cargo.” He never thought he’d be able to
pick up a spoon again.
However, 3D printing offered an astoundingly cheap and easy
solution. A horrified Mick Ebeling, who manages the
optimistically-named start-up Not Impossible Labs,
read Omar’s
story. After finding Omar in the Nuba Mountains, Ebeling fitted
Omar with a 3D-printed prosthetic arm. It cost Ebeling just
under $100 to craft the limb. “Project Daniel” gives hope to
over 50,000 amputees in war-torn South Sudan and offers a glimpse
of a future with prevalent 3D printing.
The Guardian reports:
It was a pretty amazing thing to see this boy come out of his
shell,” says Ebeling, recalling the moment Daniel picked up a spoon
for the first time since he had lost his hands. “Getting Daniel to
feed himself was a highlight that was right up there with watching
my kids being born.
South Sudan has been clouded in a messy,
ethnically-divided civil war since an unresolved power
grab in December 2013. Things are so bad that humanitarian groups
like Médecins Sans Frontières can’t prioritize the endemic of
limbless citizens.
Ebeling is disappointed by failed foreign aid campaigns and
sought to provide an alternative solution. He is back home in Los
Angeles, but he left behind a couple of 3D printers for trained
villagers to operate. They are assembling a limb per week for local
amputees in the region.
Harry McCracken of Time
argues:
That limb won’t get a tiny fraction of the attention that will
be lavished on 4K TVs, tablets and assorted other gadgets and
gizmos at the show this week — but it’s hard to imagine any other
device here doing more to make the world a better place.
Attention has
been drawn to the more
controversial applications of the innovative technology, but people
can use 3D printers to make more than home-made guns. It is the
crux of many revolutionary developments in a variety of fields
including: dental, biotech, eyewear,
art, food,
geography, and
architecture.
In a world fraught with economic, political, and technological
disparities, 3D printing offers a glimmer of hope to citizens
trapped in politically crippled regions.
Watch a video from Sky News on Omar and Ebeling below:
Read more from Reason.com on 3D printing
here.
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