Pedro Pimenta was just 18 when bacterial meningitis cost him both arms and both legs.
He spent six months hospitalized in Brazil and learned to live in a wheelchair. But ten months after being discharged, he traveled to Oklahoma, United States, and something changed: at Hanger Clinic, he met war veterans who had been amputated in Iraq and Afghanistan, learned to use his first prostheses, and discovered that independence was still possible. There, he says, he regained his plans for the future.
Today, Pimenta is the founder of Da Vinci Clinic, with locations in Barueri and Belo Horizonte, where they serve more than 200 patients a year, handcrafting prostheses and accompanying each rehabilitation process. His next step is to create an institute that will fight to ensure prostheses are covered by health insurance in Brazil. What he experienced as a tragedy is now the tool he uses to restore independence to others.
