Opening new medical vistas

JUST over 47 years ago – on December 3, 1967 – our medical experts shook the world when a team led by Chris Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant in the world in Cape Town.

American heart transplant pioneer Norman Shumway had successfully transplanted a heart into a dog 11 years earlier at Stanford University. But Professor Barnard and his team at Groote Schuur Hospital confounded the world when they gave 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, a grocer dying from chronic heart disease, a heart received from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who died in a car accident.

South African medical fundis, this time from Stellenbosch University, have again notched aworld first by performing the world’s first successful penile transplant, this time at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. A 21-year-old man was the first recipient of the transplant, after losing his penis three years ago after complications arising out of a ritual circumcision. This has opened new vistas, with more patients slated to receive new penises.

The hope is that even those affected by severe erectile dysfunction could benefit as a last resort.

The doctors, nurses, support staff, lecturers and students at Stellenbosch University and at Tygerberg Hospital responsible for this massive breakthrough are to be warmly congratulated.

This is not only a medical first, it is a potential saviour to those whose lives have been turned upside down by the loss of their manhood.

It is of particular application in South Africa where many an initiate has suffered the physical pain and deep emotional scars of a penile amputation due to botched circumcisions in the bush.

Most victims are poor, their parents being able to afford only the cheapest and often most dodgy initiation schools where these atrocities abound.

With South Africa still largely patriarchal, the loss of manhood often proves too ghastly to overcome.

Now there is hope. Already there are nine victims of botched circumcisions waiting in the wings for their transplants. But it’s costly. With most victims poor, the transplant may remain but a dream.

The public needs to step forward with funding. That’s true ubuntu.