Engineering a Strong Future for Sudan
Little Big Feature: Ashraf Mizo
Ashraf Mizo is an electrical and electronic engineer from Sudan. Around his third year in university, he started working on human-machine interface with a particular focus in prosthetics. Shortly after, he met Ali, a 40 year old man from West Sudan, a father, and unfortunately, a recent amputee. Ali had lost his hand in a horrific accident in the pipe factory he worked in. He couldn't find a prosthetic solution that accommodated his needs and now, he’s living and supporting his family off the compensation the factory gave him. The compensation is given to him in a monthly stipend and has already lost more than half its value due to inflation. Ali reached out to Ashraf for financial support, but instead of solving a short term solution, Ashraf was eager to leverage his technical experience in the field and his interest for social entrepreneurship to create something that would truly be sustainable, and aid Ali to become economically active again.
Hence, he launched Nayla Prosthetics in 2018, a startup working on the social and economic inclusion of amputees in Sudan by creating affordable and high-utility prosthetic limbs.
According to the World Health Organization, there are 40 million amputees in developing countries. Shockingly, only 5% have access to any type of prosthetics due to affordability and accessibility issues. In Sudan, almost 50% of amputees are economically inactive. An average functional prosthetic costs in the range from 10 to 30 thousand dollars which isn’t attainable. Moreover, prosthetics available in Sudan are passive and of bad quality as amputees reported. For Ali and the many amputees in Sudan, having full physical ability means access to healthcare, education, income, and social acceptance.
The global landscape of prosthetics consists of three sectors. There are many for-profit companies looking to maximize their revenue by targeting developed countries and higher end customers. There are NGOs working in underdeveloped regions but most don’t have the necessary skill sets and resources to develop adequate prosthetics. Finally, academic institutes are focused mainly on research and education but not actively addressing the gap between research and real world impact.
Ashraf’s approach to creating high-quality yet affordable prosthetics is very unique: Nayla Prosthetics takes a step back to focus on the main functionalities amputees said they actually need, and optimizes mechanical design, manufacturing, and maintenance which remove redundancies and improve sustainability. Most importantly, Nayla Prosthetics collaborates with academic institutions to leverage their resources and understanding of what it takes to create quality, affordable prosthetics in order to close the gap between someone like Ali and the resources available to him to meet his potential.
To date, Ashraf and his team have developed a functional prosthetic hand that reads the electrical signals from the amputee and reacts to those signals with movements distinguishing between five hand gestures. The hand features a simplified design for easy maintenance, a wrist rotation mechanism, and sensory feedback system that allows the amputee to feel when touching or holding something. All for less than $1,000 dollars. Ashraf has also decided to take another approach: Nayla started developing fully mechanical prosthetic hand to serve a wider range of the socioeconomic spectrum. This new approach allows for local manufacturing, easing the process of distribution and maintenance. It also means that the prosthetics would be much lighter in weight and much cheaper. The Nayla team have finished prototyping the new models and started clinical trials on a few amputees to monitor the usage of the prosthetics and continue developing. In addition to receiving a grant through Little Big Fund, Nayla received a grant of $10,000 from Haggar Foundation - one of the biggest foundations in Sudan - and $5,000 from an individual donor, allowing the project to gain momentum. Nayla and Ashraf have been featured in Forbes Magazine as an exciting and promising new social venture. Nayla was a finalist at the prestigious Falling Walls competition finale in Berlin. In addition to continuing learning, Ashraf even interned and collaborated with the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo to co-create and develop new prosthetics.
Successfully accomplishing these milestones, Ashraf has validated and reconfigured the prototype, deepened the relationship with the research center in Japan, and created a global network of the top minds and experts in the field. This has served as a launchpad for the startup to acquire new collaborations, progress in product development, and impact dozens of lives in 2020. Little Big Fund is happy to have been an early-stage mentor and supporter of Ashraf and Nayla Prosthetics.
