A physiotherapist in northwest Syria who taught himself 3D design and printing through YouTube tutorials and online forums has helped build one of the country’s most distinctive locally operated prosthetic services.
At the Al Amal Center for Physiotherapy and Prosthetics in Idlib, digital scanning, computer-aided design and modified consumer-grade 3D printers are now being used to manufacture lightweight prosthetic and orthotic devices for people affected by conflict, congenital limb difference and other causes of disability.
The story, reported by WIRED Middle East, highlights both the potential and limitations of digital manufacturing in a country where more than a decade of war has severely disrupted conventional rehabilitation infrastructure.
For the IMEA prosthetics and orthotics community, Al Amal provides an important example of what can happen when local clinical need, accessible technology and practical innovation come together.
A prosthetic service born from necessity
The centre’s founder and technical supervisor, Raafat Alothman, was working as a physiotherapist in Idlib during the Syrian conflict when he encountered increasing numbers of people with serious war-related injuries.
One case involving a seven-year-old boy who had lost part of his arm and refused to return to school pushed Alothman to search for another solution.
Without access to formal specialist education in 3D manufacturing, he began teaching himself design and printing online.
In 2021, while working from a small house in the Atma displacement camp powered by solar panels, he purchased a relatively low-cost 3D printer from China and began experimenting with prosthetic designs.
The experiment eventually developed into the Al Amal Center, established in 2023 with support from Islamic Relief.
Since June 2023, the centre has trained specialist staff, served more than 3,000 beneficiaries and supplied over 1,000 prosthetic and orthotic devices.
Full digital workflow built locally
According to WIRED Middle East, Al Amal is currently the only facility in Syria carrying out the complete digital prosthetic process—scanning, design and fabrication—in-house.
The workflow begins with clinical examination followed by high-resolution scanning of the residual limb.
Technicians then modify the digital model, accounting for geometry and areas requiring pressure relief, before sending the design to the printer.
Lightweight lattice structures can be incorporated into the device to reduce mass while retaining the required structural properties.
Importantly, the centre has deliberately selected relatively inexpensive printers that can be repaired locally rather than depending entirely on sophisticated imported industrial machinery.
That approach may be particularly relevant to low-resource O&P programmes.
The most advanced technology is not necessarily the technology most appropriate for every environment. Equipment that can be repaired, maintained and supplied locally can sometimes provide greater long-term value than a technically superior system that becomes unusable when a specialist component fails.
$100 versus $500
One of the most striking aspects of the project is the reported difference in manufacturing cost.
WIRED reports that a 3D-printed prosthetic can cost around $100 at Al Amal compared with approximately $500 for a traditional mechanical device.
The digital process can also reduce manufacturing time from days to hours in suitable cases.
For paediatric patients, this has particular significance.
Children may outgrow prosthetic sockets and devices rapidly, requiring repeated replacements as their bones grow, residual limb dimensions change and alignment requirements evolve.
Al Amal technician Khadija Barrie told WIRED that while an adult may use a prosthesis for one or two years, children at the centre can require replacement after approximately six to 14 months.
Reducing the cost and manufacturing burden of those repeated replacements could therefore have a disproportionately large effect on paediatric prosthetic access.
Digital records create another advantage
The benefits of the digital workflow extend beyond printing.
Traditional plaster models take up physical space and can be difficult to reproduce or modify. At Al Amal, patient designs can instead be stored as digital files.
Technicians can retrieve previous designs, modify dimensions and manufacture another device without recreating the entire process from the beginning.
This is particularly useful in Syria, where patients may travel long distances from areas including Aleppo, Damascus and Deir ez-Zor to obtain treatment.
When repeat travel is impossible, follow-up can sometimes be conducted through telephone calls and messaging applications, while existing digital designs can be modified where clinically appropriate.
For the wider IMEA region, this demonstrates an often underappreciated advantage of digital O&P: the patient record itself becomes a reusable manufacturing asset.
Demand remains far beyond capacity
Despite the progress, Al Amal illustrates the huge gap that remains between available rehabilitation capacity and actual need in Syria.
Humanity & Inclusion estimates cited by WIRED suggest that approximately three million Syrians have been injured since the beginning of the conflict, with almost half living with permanent impairments. The report cites an estimated 86,000 amputations.
Alothman said demand increased sharply as movement between previously divided parts of Syria became easier.
At one point, the centre received 160 new patients in a single month while its production capacity was around 30 devices.
Today, more than 2,000 people are reportedly on its waiting list.
These figures underline the scale of Syria’s rehabilitation challenge.
Even highly efficient digital production cannot compensate for insufficient numbers of trained prosthetists, orthotists, technicians, physiotherapists and rehabilitation centres.
3D printing is not suitable for every case
The Al Amal project also provides an important counterbalance to some of the more optimistic claims surrounding 3D printing.
The centre acknowledges that additive manufacturing is not appropriate for every prosthetic prescription.
Higher-load applications can require greater structural durability, while power interruptions, filament shortages and difficulties sourcing spare parts can stop production.
Islamic Relief’s Syria mission has similarly stressed that scaling digital prosthetics requires much more than purchasing printers.
Training, quality standards, reliable supply chains, maintenance systems, referral pathways and national coordination are all required for a sustainable service.
For CPOs, this is a crucial distinction.
3D printing can be a highly valuable manufacturing method, but it does not remove the need for clinical assessment, biomechanical understanding, socket modification, alignment, rehabilitation or long-term follow-up.
The printer is one part of the prosthetic system—not the system itself.
A model with wider relevance across IMEA
What makes the Al Amal story particularly interesting is not simply that prosthetic limbs are being 3D printed.
It is that the technology has been adapted to the realities of the environment.
The centre uses affordable equipment, solar power, locally maintainable printers, digital records and remote communication to operate within a fragmented healthcare system.
That model could have relevance well beyond Syria.
Across parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, patients can travel hundreds of kilometres to reach specialist O&P services. Workshops may face shortages of imported materials, specialist equipment or trained technicians.
Distributed digital manufacturing could potentially allow appropriately trained regional centres to undertake more production locally while sharing expertise and design resources across wider clinical networks.
But the central lesson from Idlib may be less about technology than about building local capability.
Alothman’s journey from physiotherapist to self-taught digital manufacturing specialist demonstrates what can happen when clinicians are given access to knowledge and adaptable technology.
The next challenge is turning initiatives like Al Amal from isolated success stories into sustainable rehabilitation systems.
For the thousands of Syrians still waiting for prosthetic care, that transition cannot happen quickly enough.
- WIRED Middle East – This Physiotherapist Learnt 3D Printing on YouTube To Make Prosthetic Limbs For Syria
- Al Amal Center for Physiotherapy and Prosthetics – Islamic Relief Syria
- Humanity & Inclusion
- Islamic Relief Worldwide
- IMEA CPO