Ukrainians taught about artificial limbs in Germany to help war wounded
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[April 07, 2023]
By Andreas Buerger and Riham Alkousaa
DUDERSTADT, Germany (Reuters) - Denys Kryvenko was among Ukrainian
soldiers retreating from the eastern city of Bakhmut in October when
Russian shells hit.
The 24-year-old woke up in hospital with a missing arm and leg: glad to
be alive but unsure if he would ever walk again.
Months later in the German town of Duderstadt, Kryvenko made his first
steps again, with an artificial leg made by Ottobock, a company founded
in 1919 to help wounded World War One veterans.
"It is difficult to learn to walk from scratch. But the most important
thing is not to give up," said Kryvenko, whose first goal is to walk
without the support of bars.
Ottobock specialists are using cases like his to train Ukrainian
technicians on constructing limbs and using their products for victims
of the war that has left thousands with fractures, amputations and
spinal cord injuries.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Apr/07/images/ads/current/lincolnag_sda_SFARM_2023.png)
"We are here to get experience that we will need to help those people in
the future," said Hryhorii Hrymorenko, a training participant from the
Ukrainian city of Poltava.
Though casualty figures on both sides of the more than year-long war are
hard to come by, they are clearly huge and Ukraine has acknowledged the
need for urgent help for the wounded.
"There really is a shortage of prosthetists, because there are a huge
number of people requiring prosthetic treatment coming in every day,"
Health Minister Viktor Liashko told Reuters in a recent interview.
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![](../images/040723PIX/health75.jpg)
Orthopaedic technician Zoe works on a
prosthetic leg at the artificial limb manufacturers Ottobock in
Duderstadt, Germany, April 4, 2023. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/May/02/images/ads/current/guzzardo_lda022609.png) 'ENORMOUS NEED'
In the fifth such course run by Ottobock since the start of the war,
the Ukrainians spent three weeks learning how to make different
types of prosthetics and to rehabilitate amputees.
Superhumans, a non-governmental organization that has created a
prosthetics rehabilitation centre in Ukraine, selected Hrymorenko
and six others for the latest training in Germany.
"There is an enormous need for prostheses and we need to train as
many technicians as possible at once," the firm's area manager
Anatoli Tirik told Reuters.
Ottobock, the world's biggest prosthetic equipment maker by market
share, delivered almost twice as many foot prostheses in the second
half of 2022 as all of 2021, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Jakobi
told Reuters, attributing that to the Ukraine war.
For Kryvenko, the long trip to Germany was worth it for a new hand
and leg - but the longer journey is yet to come as he strives to
return to normal life with artificial limbs.
(Reporting by Andreas Buerger in Duderstadt and Riham Alkousaa in
Berlin; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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