Prosthetics In Tanzania

“Prosthetic – A golden support”

Prosthetics also known as prostheses are not only the artificial body parts but also a miraculous care tool to many amputees suffering from distinctive disabilities and amputations. 

Prosthetics are uniquely used to replace body parts that have been lost due to disease, injury or birth defects. In Tanzania particularly, the risk of being an amputee is huge due to the vast cases of common motorbike accidents and the practice of various superstitious beliefs such as Albino Limb amputation for witchcraft.

Prosthetics, if not used on time, may cause severe problems like; tendinitis, bursi-tis, aggravation of arthritic conditions, reduced function, unbalanced movements causing back or neck pain and overuse syndromes (carpel tunnel, etc.). Hence, it’s highly recommended to use prosthetics whenever required and not to skip it out.

Access to such devices will greatly enhance amputee’s domestic, emotional and social lives by awarding them with less public pressure, partial functionality, and balance into their day-to-day activities.

Unfortunately, these equipments are considered to be extremely scarce in Tanzania to satisfy each and every amputee’s requirements and so a large number of people are left unattended without getting the essential prosthetics. 

According to the recent statistics, the prosthetist to amputee ratio is scant leading to the deficiency of proper and personal guidance to every single amputee living in the country. This adds up to the hinderance of prosthetic provision to various amputees in Tanzania.

Together with that well-fabricated prosthetics have shown to be too expensive for middle and low-income local citizens in Tanzania, including those living in the rural areas, due to the absence of enough budget and accessibility to such devices. 

However, there are many institutions and NGOs supporting such citizens in providing them with prosthetic on a very large scale but when it comes to producing affordable and functional prosthetic devices in Tanzania, there’s only one firm in the nation -Roverlabs.

Roverlabs, being the only company designing and manufacturing functional battery powered prosthetics in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, is working on its level best to assist as many amputees as possible.