K. A. TKACHENKO
Candidate of Economic Sciences
Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences
Keywords: armed conflicts in Africa, rehabilitation of conflict areas, cripples, amputees, innovative prosthetics technologies, crowdfunding*
Rehabilitation of the population of vast regions of Africa that have suffered as a result of numerous internal armed conflicts and wars over a long period of their recent history (since the middle of the XX century) is an urgent problem. Its humanitarian significance and public appeal cannot be overestimated. Its significance is no less than that of other challenges of the 21st century. We will touch on only one important aspect of it - prosthetics of numerous cripples.
Tens of millions of Africans from about three dozen countries of the Black continent have become victims of wars and conflicts - killed, crippled, refugees, subjected to various forms of physical violence, etc. In African States-and there were more than a dozen and a half of them affected by large-scale armed conflicts in the XX-XXI centuries-the total number of victims exceeded 15 million people. According to world organizations - the Red Cross, as well as Human Rights Watch, hundreds of thousands of crippled people lost their limbs among the huge number of victims.1 Only in South Sudan there are 50 thousand of them.
Today, more and more high-tech models of prostheses are being created for people who have undergone amputation, and these achievements in orthopedics and traumatology are regularly reported in the media.
Most often, these reports are linked to famous athletes, such as swimmer Natalie du Toit, mountain climber Stan Andrews, who conquered Kilimanjaro, or famous runner Oscar Pistorius (all three are from South Africa). Amputation, which led to physical limitations, although it became a heavy burden for these people in their new life, but did not prevent them from achieving brilliant results in world - class competitions-at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. ...
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