An 8-year-old boy whose lips were torn off during an attack by chimpanzees as he played near a river in his native Democratic Republic of Congo will undergo a rare double-lip reconstruction at a New York hospital next week.
Doctors at Stony Brook Children's Hospital on Long Island will perform the first of several surgeries on Dunia Sibomana on Monday. The goal will be to restore functioning lips that will improve his speech and stop constant drooling.
During Monday's 8-hour surgery, doctors will harvest a rectangle of skin and a nerve from Sibomana's forearm that will be used to form the circle of both lips, said Dr. Alexander Dagum, the hospital's chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery.