Wanga may smile at last after laser operation

19 March 2017 - 02:00 By SUTHENTIRA GOVENDER
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Eight-year-old Wanga Badi from Midrand is to have her burn scars treated with laser therapy administered pro bono by a team of doctors.
Eight-year-old Wanga Badi from Midrand is to have her burn scars treated with laser therapy administered pro bono by a team of doctors.
Image: Supplied

"Ghost" and "monster" are labels eight-year-old burn victim Wanga Badi has had to endure for most of her life.

The cruel taunts of her peers have turned the little girl into a recluse who rarely shows her severely scarred face to the world.

Wanga suffered third-degree burns in a shack fire in her home in an informal settlement near Midrand, Gauteng, when she was four months old.

She was left barely able to smile or blink.    

But, thanks to a revolutionary laser therapy - of the kind administered to battle-scarred US soldiers - Wanga may be on the road to rehabilitation.

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Dr Anushka Reddy, a Johannesburg aesthetic doctor and scientific director of the Cosmetic Medicine Congress of South Africa, was approached by the SABC's Outreach foundation in November last year about Wanga's plight.

She gathered a team of surgeons and secured the equipment required to treat Wanga.

The team includes French plastic surgeon Dr Matt Stefanelli and Dr Kamlen Pillay and Dr Saleigh Adams, plastic and reconstructive surgeons from the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in Cape Town, who have volunteered to be part of the journey to transform Wanga from "burns to beauty" through carbon dioxide laser treatment, which started last week.

The process is expected to take up to a year.

A private hospital group offered a theatre at one of its Johannesburg facilities free of charge for Wanga's first treatment, which included plastic surgery.

CO laser treatments have been available in South Africa for over a decade, but the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital became the first public hospital to receive the laser to treat burn victims late last year.

In Wanga's case, a demo-model laser was sourced for her treatment, to be administered in Johannesburg.

Pillay explained that this form of laser therapy is a new treatment for severe burn scar victims who experienced cosmetic and functional challenges as a result of their injuries.

Wanga is expected to receive between three and six treatments every two months.

Pillay said that while laser therapy offered hope in its ability to remodel scars, it did not remove scars completely "as no such treatment currently exists".

"The reality is that once a person has a scar, this can never be completely removed, even with laser therapy," he said.

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"The aim of the exercise with lasers is to create a scar that is more functionally and aesthetically acceptable.

"Historically, patients like Wanga were condemned to living a life of social solitude, being ridiculed by other children, which invariably lead to their withdrawal from society," said Pillay.

Wanga's unemployed mother, Zikhona Badi, said she was looking forward to the day when her daughter was pain-free and no longer the laughing stock of children at her school, where she is a Grade 3 pupil.

"I am very happy that she is getting the laser surgery even though there is not much improvement [in her appearance] yet but I know she is going to be OK.

"Children at school who are not used to her call her 'ghost' and 'monster'.

"She would be very sad. She would tell me the other children were laughing at her. It pained me a lot because she did not do this to herself.

"She has no confidence, does not like to bath and wants to hide from other people. The laser surgery will change her life," said Badi.

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