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New limb in 3 days? How Abu Dhabi workshop gives Gaza amputees 'step of hope'
What sets this programme apart is that People of Determination in the UAE are not just beneficiaries but producers
- PUBLISHED: Thu 6 Aug 2026, 4:08 PM
A traditional prosthetic limb can take weeks to produce, since it is built around a plaster cast of the patient's remaining limb, adjusted and refitted by hand at every stage. At the Zayed Higher Organisation for People of Determination's (ZHO) central workshop in Al Bahia, Abu Dhabi, the same process now takes as little as three working days.
The shift began with a strategic cooperation agreement ZHO signed with German prosthetics manufacturer OTB Bauerfeind at Expo 2020 Dubai in November 2021, bringing the company's 3D scanning and printing systems into the workshop. Instead of a manual plaster cast, technicians use a handheld scanner to capture the exact shape of the patient's residual limb, generating a digital model accurate to within 85 per cent of the intended fit. That model is refined on screen, adjusted for pressure points and load-bearing areas, before being sent directly to a 3D printer that builds the socket and, where needed, the connecting components layer by layer.
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Once printed, the limb goes through fitting and calibration with the patient, where Emirati specialists and a select group of People of Determination working in the workshop check alignment, comfort and range of motion before it is cleared for use. The same digital file can be adjusted and reprinted quickly if a patient's residual limb changes shape during recovery, something a plaster-based process would require starting over to fix.
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'Step of Hope'
That turnaround is central to "Step of Hope", the programme ZHO launched with a Dh350,000 community contribution from the Authority of Social Contribution – Ma'an to manufacture and fit limbs for Palestinians affected by the war in Gaza.
"Step of Hope" is a direct extension of ZHO's mission, said Abdullah Al Humaidan, the organisation's Secretary-General: putting its national expertise and technical capacity in prosthetics and rehabilitation to work restoring hope for the injured. What sets the programme apart, he noted, is that People of Determination in the UAE are not just beneficiaries but producers, manufacturing the very limbs that will go to those injured in Gaza, a gesture he framed as proof that People of Determination are active contributors to humanitarian work, not just recipients of it.
The same 3D printing capacity that now serves "Step of Hope" was originally built to meet prosthetics demand across the UAE and the wider Gulf, part of the UAE's broader shift under Operation Chivalrous Knight 3 from emergency relief towards recovery and rehabilitation for those affected by the war.
Emirati Journalist