Aina Wifalk

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Aina Wifalk (born March 21, 1928 in Lund ; † June 16, 1983 in Västerås ) was a Swedish social scientist and the inventor of the modern walker .

Live and act

Wifalk was born on March 21, 1928 in Lund, Sweden. During her training as a nurse, she fell ill with polio in 1949 at the age of 21 . The illness forced Wifalk to drop out of training. From then on she campaigned for people with disabilities. In 1952 she founded an association for the physically disabled in her hometown of Lund, in 1958 an association for patients with multiple sclerosis in the Västmanland region and in 1968 the National Association for Accident Victims in Västerås.

After dropping out of her training, she studied social sciences. From 1957 she worked as a consultant in the orthopedic clinic in Västerås, and at the end of the 1960s she also advised the city of Västerås on the interests of handicapped people.

Aina Wifalk died on June 16, 1983 at the age of 55 in Västerås.

Inventions

The rollator, Wifalk's most famous invention

Wifalk developed two aids for people with physical limitations or disabilities: the Manuped and the walker. She did not patent her inventions because she wanted to make them available to as many people with disabilities as possible. She only received royalties from the sale of her developments, which she bequeathed to the Nordic Church Association on the Spanish Costa del Sol , which she had visited several times during her lifetime.

Manuped

Wifalk presented its first invention to the public in 1965. The development called "Manuped" is a training device for people with physical limitations or disabilities. With the Manuped, those affected can train arms and legs as well as their coordination with one another. On the basis of Manuped, various training devices for physically handicapped people were developed in the following decades, which are used today in health care and in special sports schools.

Rollator

In the 1970s, Wifalk was more and more restricted in its locomotion due to its polio disease. Since the four-legged walking frames available at that time did not meet the requirements of a comfortable walking aid, she began to develop them. It made the original frame more stable, added larger wheels and brakes as well as a shelf or seat, and optimized the device for use both inside and outside of buildings. In 1978 Wifalk presented the first draft of a rollator . With the help of a government development fund, she found a Swedish company to manufacture a prototype, and series production of the rollator began a short time later.

The rollator established itself worldwide in the following decades. In Germany alone, it is estimated that up to three million people regularly used a walker in mid-2016, and the number is increasing.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Aina Wifalk - Moeder of rollators. (No longer available online.) Rolnu.nl, archived from the original on October 27, 2016 ; Retrieved October 27, 2016 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ a b Charlotta von Schultz: Kvinnan som står bakom rollatorn. NyTeknik, August 1, 2014, accessed October 27, 2016 (Swedish).
  3. ↑ Erik Sundberg: utställning på turné - Kvinnor uppfinner. Sveriges Television, January 15, 2010, accessed October 27, 2016 (Swedish).
  4. ↑ Ellen Willemse: Prayer ?! Toekomstbeelden van technology in de Zorg . Ed .: Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek. The Hague 2015, ISBN 978-94-91397-11-0 , pp. 119 (Dutch, full text online , PDF, free of charge, 152 pages, 5.8 MB).
  5. ↑ Cornelia Färber: The rollator is irreplaceable for many senior citizens. Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, September 15, 2016, accessed on October 27, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Wifalk, Aina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish inventor
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Lund
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1983
Place of death Västerås