A 7-year-old boy, Benevolence Iticha, could not hide the joy in his face after a 10-hour surgery at Kenyatta National Hospital that saw his severed arm reattached successfully.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday evening, October 21, his parents Anthony and Lydia Iticha struggled even harder to contain their happiness as they expressed heartfelt gratitude to the team of doctors.
As the cameras zoomed in on the young boy's heavily-bandaged arm, his tiny fingers could be seen twitching as he attempted to make a fist. A clear indication that he was well on his way to recovery.
"After the severed limb reached KNH in a cool box, our team embarked on an intricate surgical procedure that reclaimed the boy's hand. The boy is now stable and recuperating," said Dr Benjamin Wabwire, the head of KNH's Department of Plastic Surgery.
The boy's mother narrated the horrific event that occurred in their cowshed just a few hours earlier.
She was thrown into action when Benovelence started screaming while running towards her with blood oozing from his right hand.
When he was close enough, she noticed that his wrist was hacked off. A chaff-cutter was later discovered to have been how he lost his hand.
"I held onto him tightly, removed the headscarf I had on and wrapped it around the hand," she recalled.
Thinking on her feet, the mother put his severed hand inside a shopping bag and with the help of a neighbor rushed him to Nazareth Hospital in Kiambu County.
The medics at the facility placed the hand in a cool box before referring the patient to KNH for emergency treatment.
According to the doctors, the delicate procedure involved identification and aligning of blood vessels, nerves, tendons as well as doing the same to the bones and arteries.
Children have smaller blood vessels and so carrying out such a surgery is much harder than doing it on an adult. However, his age will also play a big role in his recovery as children tend to heal faster.
This was the fifth time that doctors at KNH have performed such a surgery, since their very first success story in February 2018.
