Mozambique: Teacher Inácio travelled 2,000 kilometres for a prosthesis dream come true

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Mozambique: Teacher Inácio travelled 2,000 kilometres for a prosthesis dream come true

11:46 CAT | 11 Aug 2025

Photo: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa

More than 2,000 kilometres separated teacher Inácio Júlio from his dream of having one of the more than 1,200 prostheses made available by India for one of his legs, but the day has arrived, and he now believes a new life will come too.

“If the prostheses truly helps, life won’t stay the same. It will get better. I won’t have to go to class on crutches; I’ll be walking, and something can change,” he told Lusa during a visit to the hospital in Maputo.

Born in Nampula, in the north of the country, Inácio learned through social media about the campaign for prostheses collected in India and delivered to Maputo Central Hospital. He has been teaching in Zambézia province since 2017 and was involved in a traffic accident in 2021.

Now, he has decided to seek improvement in his condition with the free prosthesis and hopes his life will change: “Medicine is quite advanced. So, when we received information that Indian prostheses were available, I was very curious. I did everything I could to travel from Nampula to here [Maputo] to acquire the Indian prosthesis.”

Inácio is one of several beneficiaries who have travelled from all over the country to Maputo Central Hospital since July to receive the prostheses donated by India as a way to mark 50 years of friendship and cooperation with Mozambique.

Arriving at HCM in the morning, Inácio says he was staying in a house which belongs to a church and that he expected something different, like what he sees in movies, which was not the case.

“But the reality I found isn’t what we imagined. The prosthetics I had imagined aren’t the same as the ones we find here. Here, we found prosthetics made with local materials, although some foreign parts are used,” he says.

The prosthetics are manufactured at the hospital on the same day, and beneficiaries can have them within a few hours.

In this campaign, supported by the Indian organization Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS), approximately 1,230 Mozambicans were fitted with lower limb prosthetics in just over a month, in a campaign which lasted up until the available materials ran out in the last few days.

Rosa António, 34, from Boane district, Maputo province, was also waiting. She came to HCM hoping for a “miracle” in her daily routine of cleaning and running errands.

She lost one of her legs in a traffic accident, which changed everything.

“I was very happy because I’ve always worked and been doing this and that. When the accident happened, I couldn’t do it without being able to walk. I was happy when they told me I’d be getting a prosthetic. At least it’ll help me a little,” Rosa says, adding that she “cried day and night” because she couldn’t afford a prosthetic.

“It’s harder for me to sweep the yard, grind peanuts, and do other things like go to the machamba (agricultural field). Walking with crutches and picking up a hoe wouldn’t be possible,” she explains.

Production capacity at HCM is less than 30 prosthetics per month, but with the “Jaipur Foot Camp” campaign, a project inspired by an Indian model of low-cost, easily adaptable prosthetics, which began at the end of June, it was possible to produce between 30 to 40 prosthetics per day.

According to Celeste Elias, an orthopaedic technician at HCM, the process begins with registration and evaluation. Patients with contractures or painful stumps are referred for physical therapy or dressings until they are fit to receive the device.

Celeste understands that the main technical challenge is the technological distance between India and the HCM devices, but her team is capitalizing on the learning curve: “Communication is a real obstacle, because most of them only speak English. Many of us don’t speak English, we don’t speak the Indian language.”

She admits it’s remarkable to learn that it is possible to make a prosthesis in less than 24 hours. “We realized that what we can do in 30 days, we can do in a week. It’s very exciting. It’s an area worth embracing,” she says.

Source: Lusa