Nairobi, Kenya, 1998 – After the Al-Qaeda bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, Kenyan nationals who had lost limbs in the blast faced an agonising wait of potentially years before they would be fitted with a prosthetic limb.
The Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya (APDK) had one staff member, Lucy, pictured here, working hard to try and source prosthetic limbs. She would handwrite letters then fax them to health organisations which may be able to help.
When Ross Cockburn heard about this he knew he could help. A donation of a computer along with email and mail-merge software enabled Lucy to rapidly send out the call for help via a mass mailout to a database of clinics and hospitals all around the world.
It shortened the wait time for prosthetics for the victims from years down to months.