Ukrainians taught about artificial limbs in Germany to help war wounded

[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.

"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.

Orthopaedic technician Zoe works on a prosthetic leg at the artificial limb manufacturers Ottobock in Duderstadt, Germany, April 4, 2023. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

'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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