Artur Wąsowicz

Why this foundation

Most foundations have a mission written into their statute. This one has a founder who lives it every day.

In 2020 I lost my left leg. I'm not writing this to elicit sympathy - I'm writing it because it's a fact that explains why this foundation exists at all.

I started looking for information while still in hospital - in the week after waking from a coma, lying there with an amputated left leg, a broken right leg and a damaged spine. I wanted to leave knowing the basics of what lay ahead. Over the following years I gathered knowledge about prosthetics, rehabilitation, phantom pain treatment and funding options. I gathered it from dozens of scattered, often contradictory sources. Knowledge that this foundation brings together in one place.

The first thoughts about the foundation came around six months after the accident - in late July 2020. I knew one thing then: this was not the right moment yet. Left leg: amputation, intramedullary nail, a screw and a fractured trochanter. Right leg: femur with an intramedullary nail and four screws, fractured trochanter. Spine: fractured lumbar vertebrae, six months in a brace. A broken scaphoid in my right hand.

Outside, a pandemic was underway. For the first two and a half years I lived mostly in a wheelchair - with phantom pain so severe I was taking nineteen painkillers a day. During that time I went through three more operations: femoral dynamisation, nail replacement and re-amputation with stump revision - necessary because of osteolysis at the tip of the femur in the stump, detected after haematomas began forming on the stump and pain appeared once the socket was in place. I knew what I wanted to build. I waited patiently for five years. I started the first work on the statute in 2025.

Where this competence comes from

Before I lost my leg, I spent nearly a decade building a home care and medical staffing agency. At its peak it employed over 250 people and was the first in the region to hold UK Home Care Association accreditation - before sending anyone to a patient, I had to be certain my staff knew what they were doing.

For several years I've worked with a technology company from Poznań as a consultant and tester for Poland's first bionic foot and knee prosthesis. I advise on functionality and walking comfort, not engineering. It's a separate project, unrelated to the foundation.

The foundation's logo shows two feet: a natural one and a bionic one. It's a meeting I know from my own life. On one side there is the body and emotions - on the other, engineering and solutions that help you regain mobility. Świat Bioniki works exactly at that intersection.

The perspective no textbook can provide

I'm not a doctor or a prosthetist. I don't have a degree in biomechanics. And - perhaps surprisingly - that is my greatest advantage in this project.

I know what a person who has just returned home after amputation is looking for. I know what it means to put on a prosthesis for the first time and step outside. No textbook describes this. I live this material from the inside - that is the perspective missing from every catalogue and brochure.

What the foundation does

The Świat Bioniki Foundation brings together knowledge, community and direct support for beneficiaries - I am building it as someone who has walked this path myself.

On the swiatbioniki.pl portal and YouTube channel you will find knowledge about prosthetics, rehabilitation and everyday life after amputation - written in plain language, not catalog copy.

In the community you will find people who were exactly where you are now - and know what this path looks like from the inside.

The portal, YouTube, support programmes - all of it so that the next person after amputation doesn't have to search as long as I did.