EDGE conversation with DAVID MOININA SENGEH
I think beyond me, beyond our individual silos, to achieve prosperity and development in a place like Sierra Leone does not involve giving free devices to victims, which leads to low self-efficacy and dependence on external actors; we need to make new minds. That involves giving young people the platform to innovate, to learn from making, and to learn, and to solve very tangible problems within their communities.
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My research background is focused on using multi-material 3D printing, kind of based on the way the human body is. The human body itself is multi-material, and the impedance varies on each location, but the mechanical interfaces that connect our body usually don’t vary much at all. It’s this question of mass customization of devices that we interact with. If you go to the eyeglass store and you take an eyeglass frame, it is one impedance. It doesn’t matter that your body and your face has difference impedances around your ear, you deal with it because this is what you have. Why worry? Why make a fuss about it?
The point is that we have technological advances today that you should be comfortable whenever you have an interface. So a knee brace should be made for you, it should be comfortable. Your ski boot should be comfortable. But more importantly, if you’re an amputee—if you’re somebody who does not have a limb—and you’re using a prosthetic interface then your comfort and your livelihood are very intertwined.
Many people say that nearly 100 percent of amputees experience lots of pain within their prosthetic sockets. The reason is, because the way the socket is done is very crude, it’s artisan. As an amputee I go to you, the prosthetist, and you take my limb and make a cast and have a positive mold of my limb, and you push on my limb and say, “How does that feel? Does that bone? This bone? And you say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s very uncomfortable,” and then you add material so that there’s a void because the interface that you’re going to wrap around my body is made out of carbon fiber, which is super hard, and it’s going to have a lot of pressure on your body. So if your body changes, which everybody’s does, then you have high pressures over places where you don’t want those pressures. You end up having blisters, and pressure sores, and the amputee’s livelihood is being impacted.
Here’s an analogy, I suppose: If I gave you a pair of shoes that were $600, but they were maybe half size, two sizes, one size too small for you, you would not use it, right? You’d rather go barefoot. But if I give you a $10 pair of shoes that was comfortable—your size—you’ll use that, right? So most amputees, especially those in the developing world, even though they’re given free prostheses, choose not to wear the prosthetic device because it’s uncomfortable.
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