Boy attacked by chimpanzees now has lips

Meet Dunia Sibomana who for the first time in two years is able to sip soup through his newly created lips.

Barely 8 years, Sibomana recently began a series of operations to reconstruct both his lips at the Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in New York.

After being attacked by chimpanzees in his native home in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while playing with his brother and cousin, he was the only survivor.

“Usually, it’s the other way around, we don’t get as much as we would like, particularly, in cases where there’s a lot of scarring, a lot of deformity, you don’t quite reach the goal. In his case, I think we went further than we thought,” Alexander Dagum, the hospital’s chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery said.

With the use of tissue and muscle from his forearm, what was estimated to be an eight hour surgery lasted 14 hours as doctors performed the first of three major operations.

“This was ground-breaking surgery to restore both upper and lower lips and what I watched was skilled surgeons under a microscope sewing arteries to arteries, sutchering together, bringing nerves and veins together,” Dr. Leon Klempner founder, of smile rescue fund for kids said.

Over the course of nine months, Sibomana will continue to undergo several surgeries. He was brought to the US last year with the help of Non-profit organisation Smile Rescue for Kids.