![]() ![]() “So our mission is to help those kids who would normally be turned away.” “I saw many children who were so badly disfigured that they were beyond the scope of those organizations to help,” said Klempner, who has recently retired to dedicate all of this time to his charity. We’re hoping he’ll gain enough self-confidence from these surgeries to come out of his isolation.” 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to school in the Congo for a short period of time after he first recovered, but the kids made fun of him and he became withdrawn and alone.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 psychosocial impact of the attack on the boy. “He brought Dunia’s medical condition to our attention,” says Klempner. 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.” “And when he went to look for the boys, the first thing he found were dismembered pieces of his younger son,” said Klempner. 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,” said Klempner. 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,” says Dagum, “and that’s easier because you borrow tissue from one lip to rebuild the other. Another three to five surgeries will follow over the next year. 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. 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.” “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. The animals killed the friend, killed and dismembered his brother and left Dunia severely injured. ![]() When he was 6, 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. The hospital team volunteered it’s services and the boy is receiving support for several community organizations on Long Island. The first procedure will take at least 8-hours. The child will start the first of at least five rounds of surgeries on Monday. ![]() “He drools all the time and can’t pronounce different words but hopefully we can change that with the surgery.” Alexander Dagum at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, where Dunia will undergo the operation. “As you can imagine, not having any lips, the food can just come right out,” said Dr. The other boys died but Dunia survived, though he was severely disfigured, his lips ripped off and one cheek torn apart, leaving him with muscle damage that make it hard for him to eat, swallow and communicate. Two years ago a group of chimpanzees attacked him and two other boys as they played near a preserve in their native Democratic Republic of the Congo. NEW YORK - Eight-year-old Dunia Sibomana is being called one of the the lucky ones. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. ![]()
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