In a blog post on April 26, we wrote about young kids from other countries who were getting life-altering surgery here in the United States to save them from a life of pain and disfigurement from severe burns.
Well, here is another such example, which is good news for a young victim of third-degree burns who lives in Congo. In Boston this week, a badly burned Congolese boy is recovering from reconstructive surgery at Shriners Hospital, and his expected quality of life is much better than it was before the surgery.
Unfortunately, he was playing hide-and-seek on the grounds of a power substation back home in Congo, and 9-year-old Yusuf Badibanga was nearly killed because of it. He came in contact with some of the equipment and suffered an enormous electric shock, and was badly burned to the point of severe disfigurement.
Shriners Hospital plastic surgeon Dr. Daniel Driscoll said the boy was severely disfigured, especially on his right side, when he arrived in Boston. “His deformities include a lack of an upper extremity [an arm] on his right side, and he has problems because he has no external auditory canal in his right ear,” said Dr. Driscoll.
Badibanga underwent surgery to reconstruct his skin through grafts and to fix his deviated windpipe. Doctors said more treatments will follow–but this was a first step towards a life that is more normal and without as much pain as he would have had to endure.
Just as that good news was happening, though, an adult man in Longview, Texas became yet another victim of on-the-job severe burns that probably could have been avoided: The man, a worker at a scrap metal yard, was seriously burned in a tank explosion while he used a cutting torch.
Longview police spokeswoman Kristie Brian says the accident happened one morning last week at Youngblood’s Scrap and Metals. She says the injured worker, whose name was not immediately released, was being transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, which has a burn unit.
Brian says the accident involved some type of flammable substance in a tank, which exploded. The explosion was so strong that some nearby residents called police to report what they thought was a possible earthquake.
Whether or not the worker made a mistake in his work, or if his company wrongly placed him in a dangerous situation, is not clear. In such a case, it would be wise to obtain consultation from a personal injury law firm such as Kramer & Pollack in Mineola, NY. This firm specializes in burn-injury cases and can determine if a victim is entitled to a compensatory award that will aid the victim in their recovery and in their altered lifestyle going forward.