Chimpanzee face surgery10/4/2023 ![]() He went to school in the Congo for a short period of time after he first recovered, but the kids made fun of him, and he became withdrawn and alone. But, even more significant, is the psycho-social impact of the attack on the boy. “He brought Dunia’s medical condition to our attention,” Klempner said. The park ranger who helped them was Andre Bauma, who actually appears in the ‘Virunga’ documentary playing with his adopted gorillas. “Then, he found Dunia and took him to the park rangers for medical attention.” “When he went to look for the boys, the first thing he found were dismembered pieces of his younger son,” Klempner said. The boy’s father was working in a field nearby but didn’t hear the boys’ screams over the roar of the river. “We think that, because of the poaching and violence in the park, all of the primates in the area view humans as enemies.” “Dunia’s village seems to be close to the territory of the chimpanzees and is probably viewed by the animals as their territory,” Klempner said. Many gorillas are orphaned by poachers, and the struggle to protect them from violence is the subject of a 2014 critically acclaimed documentary by executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio. The boys were playing by a river that flows along the edge of Virunga, the oldest national park in Africa and famous for being the home of the critically endangered mountain gorilla. So, it’s very difficult to bring healthy tissue to that area and have it survive, much less reconnect nerves.” Dunia’s lost muscle, nerve and blood supply to the area, and there’s also a lot of scarring. “It’s not just a matter of just connecting tissue to lips. “This type of surgery is very difficult,” said Klempner, an orthodontist who will assist in the surgery. The team members, who along with Stony Brook University Hospital are donating their services, will take tissue and nerves from the boy’s arm to rebuild the lips. There’s maybe one or two reports in the world of both lips being reconstructed.” “A number of surgeries have rebuilt an upper or a lower lip,” Dagum said, “That’s easier, because you borrow tissue from one lip to rebuild the other. Alexander Dagum, who will lead the team of surgeons who will perform the eight hour operation on Dunia on Monday on New York’s Long Island.Īnother three to five surgeries will follow over the next year. The surgery to repair Dunia’s lips is very rare, according to Stony Brook Chief of Plastic Surgery Dr. He’s also unable to make certain speech sounds with no lips.” Leon Klempner, founder of the Smile Rescue Fund for Kids, who brought Dunia to the United States for treatment. “Having no lips makes it very challenging for Dunia to chew and swallow food, so he’s compensated by tipping his head back to eat. “His upper and lower lips were ripped off, his face was disfigured, he lost a finger and some of his right ear had internal damage,” said Dr. The animals killed the friend, killed and dismembered his brother and left Dunia severely injured. When he was 6, Dunia Siboman was playing with his 4-year-old brother and a friend near Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo when they were attacked by a troop of chimps. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.Ī young African boy severely mauled by chimpanzees will undergo reconstructive surgery next week that may allow him to eat, drink and talk normally for the first time in two years. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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