The Duke of Sussex's Archewell foundation has donated $500,000 to projects supporting injured children from Gaza and Ukraine, including helping the World Health Organization with evacuations and work developing prosthetics.
The announcement came as Prince Harry, 40, visited the Centre for Blast Injuries at Imperial College in London to learn more about its work, especially an increased focus on injuries suffered by children and those sustained in natural disasters, during the third day of his UK trip.
"No single organisation can solve this alone," the Duke said in a statement. "Gaza now has the highest density of child amputees in the world and in history. It takes partnerships across government, science, medicine, humanitarian response and advocacy to ensure children survive and can recover after blast injuries."
The three grants announced by Harry and his wife Meghan's Archewell Foundation include $200,000 to the World Health Organization to support medical evacuations from Gaza to Jordan, and $150k to the Save the Children charity to provide ongoing humanitarian support in Gaza.The third grant of $150,000 was to the Centre of Blast Injury Studies, part of CIS, to help its efforts to develop prostheses that can support injured children, particularly those children injured from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
It comes after the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess of Wales made private donations to a group of charities working to get aid into Gaza and Lebanon last October.
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© WireImageHarry was reunited with Dave Henson
Harry arrives
Harry, who served in the Army for a decade, was reunited with friend and former Army captain David Henson, who served as Team GB captain for the inaugural Invictus Games, founded by the Duke for wounded and sick military and veterans. Mr Henson lost both his legs above the knee after standing on an improvised explosive device in 2011 while clearing a compound in Afghanistan. He went on to gain a PhD in Amputee Biomechanics at Imperial.
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© GC ImagesHarry was greeted warmly at the Centre
Third interaction
Upon arrival, Emily Mayhew, the paediatric blast injury lead at Imperial College London, told Harry: "We very much consider you part of our story." The outing marked the Duke's third interaction with the Centre for Blast Injury Studies, having opened the new laboratories in 2013. In 2019, he attended part of the Blast Injury Conference, the biennial conference hosted by the Centre that brings together engineers, clinicians, NGOs and policy makers from the civilian and military contexts to discuss the latest in blast injury research.
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© Getty ImagesHarry was given a tour of the facility
Lab tour
Harry was joined by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyes and Dave Henson for a tour of the CIS, where he met with research teams working on a number of world-leading projects. The CIS said children were seven times more likely to die from blast injuries than adults, and in 2023, with support from Save the Children, it began expanding its work to launch the Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies.
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© Getty ImagesHarry examines a prosthetic limb
Learning about their work and research
The father-of-two was shown new designs for prosthetic knee joints for children, a demonstration of the world's most advanced foot and ankle physiological simulator, and the "gait lab" which uses a virtual environment with motion capture cameras and a treadmill to evaluate the impact of new prosthetic designs on patients.
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© Getty ImagesSteve Arnold gave a demonstration
Gait lab equipment
"Here's a good looking man," Harry commented when he saw Steve Arnold who was demonstrating the gait lab equipment. Steve lost both his legs in an IED blast in Afghanistan in 2011, and is also well known to the Duke after taking part in the 2014 and 2017 Invictus Games as a cyclist.
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© Getty ImagesSteve is a former Invictus Games competitor
Steve praises Harry
"It's a massive help," Steve said of Harry's visit, saying it would hopefully ensure that children and others got the same level of support he had received over the 14 years and "get better with whatever disability they have".
