How a 3-D printed arm gave hope to boy maimed in bomb blast
(CNN) -- It's a good thing I didn't know exactly how dangerous a trip I was embarking on, because when I left home in October 2013 to fly to Sudan, I was scared enough. What I had committed to was, quite frankly, the most "impossible" thing I'd ever tried to accomplish.
Three months earlier, over dinner, I'd learned about a doctor in Sudan's Nuba mountains, Dr. Tom Catena, who was treating thousands of people -- many of them children -- who'd had limbs blown off in the Sudanese government's bombing raids . By coincidence, we'd just posted an article to our website about Richard Van As, an amazing inventor who created a low-cost, 3-D printed prosthetic hand. So, over a second beer, I raised the possibility -- wouldn't it be cool if we brought printers over to Sudan and made arms for these kids?
Mick EbelingThe story might have ended there -- one of those plans you cook up over dinner and forget by breakfast. Really, what can one person do in the face of such widespread sorrow thousands of miles away?
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