A seven-year-old boy born without a right hand is now beaming with joy as he tried out his new ‘robot arm’.
Louie Morgan-Kemp, of Swavesey, Cambridgeshire, had just started fundraising for the prosthetic when a kind-hearted businessman saw his story in the news and offered to pay the full £13,000 cost.
The youngster collected the Ironman-themed Hero Arm this week and can move its mechanical fingers by using muscles in his arm to press buttons inside the sleeve.
Louie said the gadget, made by Bristol-based Open Bionics, helps him with picking things up, cutting food and pouring drinks.
He said it was ‘exciting’ to get the arm and he was ‘happy’ that businessman Billy Dixon had paid for him to get it.
Louie Morgan-Kemp is now enjoying his new Ironman-themed prosthetic arm
The seven-year-old was born without an arm but can now use the £13,000 prosthetic to perform a variety of everyday tasks
The 73-year-old, of Egham, Surrey, saw a story about the family’s fundraising in the news this year and contacted Louie’s mother on Facebook offering to pay in full.
Mr Dixon said at the time: ‘I couldn’t think not to do it, it’s just in my nature doing things like that.’
Louie’s mother, Hannah Morgan, 32, said she was grateful to Mr Dixon, adding: ‘We weren’t expecting to have it happen so quickly.’
Louie used the arm to drink lemonade from a glass and to hold a bag of crisps, using his left hand to eat them, as he got to grips with it on Wednesday.
Teaching assistant Ms Morgan said the school summer holidays this year had ‘been all about waiting for that – for the Hero Arm’.
The prosthetic, called the Hero Arm is engineered and manufactured in the UK
His mum Hannah Morgan said the school summer holidays this year had ‘been all about waiting for that – for the Hero Arm’
Louie can move the mechanical fingers in the hand by using muscles in his arm to press buttons inside the sleeve
The family were fundraising to pay for the arm but kind-hearted business man Billy Dixon offered to buy it for them outright
‘It’s all he spoke about,’ she said.
‘People have said how cool it is.’
Speaking earlier this year, she said Louie had been telling people he was getting a ‘robot arm’ and was ‘so excited’.
Open Bionics said the Hero Arm is engineered and manufactured in the UK.
It describes it as the ‘world’s most affordable multi-grip prosthetic arm, with multi-grip functionality and empowering aesthetics’.
