Kerala doctors reconstruct Kenyan man's face

Kochi:  A 32-year-old Kenyan car driver, who suffered serious bullet injuries on his face during an attack by dacoits in May in South Sudan, has been given a new lease of life after doctors of a private hospital here reconstructed his disfigured face.

Klarie Michael Chegre, an employee of the LOTS Shipping company was travelling along with his firm's CEO Renjith T Nelluvelli, when their car was attacked. Nelluvelli was killed in the attack while Michael suffered bullet injuries in the face.

A bullet entered his upper neck and went through his mouth, shattering his palate and cheek bone and came out through the eye, resulting in irreversible injury to his left eye, doctors who treated him said.

After his condition stabilised, Michael was brought to the Lourdes hospital here in June. Maxillofacial surgeon, Dr Ram Mohan and the plastic surgeon Dr Chacko Cyriac painstakingly pierced together what was left of his facial skeleton.

Cyriac told reporters here that there was a gaping hole on his face where his eye and cheek were. The shattered bones of his face healed in abnormal positions, making it difficult for him to close his mouth or speak clearly.

Any water he drank would go either through his nose or through his cheek. After the frame of the face was ready, Cyriac conducted over five major surgeries, reconstructed the lost bones of the face, cheek, the eye socket, the eyelid and closed the hole.

Bone, skin cartilage were taken from other parts of his body and used. Once he had a near normal facial form, an artificial eye shell was placed where his eye was.