HOPEFUL SURGERY: In a medical first, veterinarians Jana Pretorius, left, and Johan Marais use a human surgical technique to close a gaping wound on rhino poaching survivor Hope. Picture: MOELETSI MABE
THE road to recovery will be long, but white rhino cow Hope took another step towards a normal life when she underwent groundbreaking surgery to repair her disfigured face yesterday.
Hope’s continuous fight against adversity has not only made her a symbol of perseverance, but also an ambassador for the fight against rhino poaching across the world.
Yesterday, the five-year-old rhino received cutting-edge implants that should help close or narrow the 30cm gash on her face where poachers violently removed her horn on the Lombardini private game reserve, near Jeffreys Bay, in May last year.
The attack on Hope was so violent, and the wound on her face so deep, that it exposed her entire nasal cavity and almost destroyed her top lip.
She was moved to the Shamwari private game reserve for treatment, before making her trek in February to a reserve near Bela Bela, in Limpopo, where she is currently being treated.
“There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, and we have no guarantee that the work we have done up to now will work,” Saving the Survivors spokeswoman Suzanne Boswell said yesterday.
Hope’s latest treatment saw Saving the Survivors veterinarian Johan Marais install “hi-tech shoelaces on steroids” into her face.
It took Marais and his team, which included vets from Shamwari and experts in various medical fields, a little more than an hour to install the system that will attempt to pull the skin on both sides of the wound closer together, narrowing the opening in the rhino’s face as the skin starts its natural healing process.
The technology, known as the Abdominal Reapproximation Anchor (Abra) System, was created for human use, and the South Africa distributor for the product, Surgitech, donated the Abra System used in Hope’s face.
All of the veterinary experts involved in yesterday’s surgery donated their time
If all goes according to plan, the tension on the strands will be increased over time to pull the skin closer as it heals.
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