Two surgeons from Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York have recalled their journey with a Kenyan teen, Saline Atieno who had been suffering from a deadly bacterial necrosis ‘Noma’.
Saline, 19, had for years lived with a disfigured face as a result of the bacterial infection until Dr Leon Klempner and Alexander Dagum performed reconstructive surgery on her.
She flew back home in April after the high-level surgery in the US.
The two doctors recently documented their eight-year journey with Saline who was unable to attend school or feed.
Dr Klempner said he first learned of Saline’s condition in 2010 at Gertrude’s Children Hospital in Nairobi. One of the doctor’s at Gertrude emailed him of the teen’s condition.
When he met Saline and assessed her condition, he found out that Saline lacked an upper lip and a pallet with an incomplete nose which made feeding, speaking and other activities difficult for her.
Dr Klempner, a retired orthodontist, Stony Brook Dental Medicine professor flew Saline to the US in 2013 through his non-profit organization Smile Rescue Fund and performed 10 reconstructive surgeries on her.
“She was homebound…she went to school once or twice and never came back because the kids would make fun of her. I knew I couldn’t help all kids but I could help one and Saline was the one,” Dr Klempner said.
Though she did not regain normalcy, she was able to feed and speak. She returned to Kenya in 2014 and got infections on her cheek that were untreatable in Nairobi.
It is then that she was flown back to the US where Dr Dagum, Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery diagnosed her and treated the infection.
In February 2019, Dr Klempner had Saline flown to Long Island where he, together with Dr Dagum and a team of other doctors from Stony Brook performed five more reconstructive surgeries on her.
The surgeries went up to January 2020 but she could not return home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. She had to stay with her host family.
She made tremendous improvement and was closely monitored by the medical team.
She attended Newfield High School in Selden.