3D-printed prosthetic limbs: the next revolution in medicine

John Nhial was barely a teenager when he was grabbed by a Sudanese guerrilla army and forced to become a child soldier. He spent four years fighting, blasting away on guns almost too heavy to hold, until one day the inevitable happened: he was seriously injured, treading on a landmine while he was on morning patrol. "I stepped on it and it exploded," he recalled. "It threw me up and down again – and then I tried to look for my leg and found that there was no foot." His comrades carried him back to base camp, but there was hardly any medical care available. It took 25 days before he received proper treatment, during which time he developed tetanus down one side of his body.