Toddler doing well after getting new skin

Burn victim Celiwe Maseko is making good progress after becoming the second person in South Africa to receive cloned skin last month.

“She is now fully awake ... she’s back to normal and is the Celiwe I knew before surgery,” her paediatrician Porai Moshesh told the Beeld.

According to Beeld, doctors brought five-year-old Maseko out of a medically-induced coma this week.

She was reportedly kept comatose for several weeks after the operation to make sure the new tissue successfully attached to her body.

Ridwan Mia, who did the first transplant of cloned skin on toddler Pippie Kruger, also did five-year-old Maseko’s operation at the Garden City Clinic, in Johannesburg, at the end of March.

Maseko, from Kagiso on the West Rand, sustained third degree burns to 35% of her body in January when a friend threw a lit match at her and her dress caught fire.