The past two weeks I traveled together with Ruud Leijendekkers and Marco Papenburg to Masanga in Sierra Leone to give a course in rehabilitation for prosthetics to the fourth-year Bachelor students physiotherapy.
Together with the local physiotherapist Abu Amara and prosthetist Abdulrahman Dumbuya, we introduced the students to prepare the patient and the stump for a prosthesis, the importance of alignment, and the general physiotherapy training to improve the walking patterns of the patients.
In the coming months, the students will graduate and will be distributed to various rehabilitation centers and hospitals in Sierra Leone. We hope that with this course we have given them the knowledge to put the rehabilitation for prosthetics in practice in the whole country.
We finished the course with a diploma ceremony. We wish the students good luck in their future careers and we hope to see some of them back to provide rehabilitation for the 3D project in Masanga Hospital.
This course was initiated by the 3D Sierra Leone Foundation in collaboration with the 3D Lab Radboudumc and Radboudumc and the local staff members from the Rehabilitation Center in Freetown. It aims to improve prosthetic care in Sierra Leone. Ismaila Kebbie