While visiting one of our sponsor children last week we noticed that her hand was badly swollen. We discovered that some time ago she had been out playing and had fallen into a thorn bush. The thorns had lodged themselves deep into her hand. She visited a poor local hospital where they did an operation to remove the thorns. The doctors said that they could not locate them and stitched her hand up.

Sne's swollen hand

The photo shows her hand 2 months later. A large abscess has formed protruding both sides of her hand. It left her in constant pain and unable to play with the other kids or even hold a pen.

We are not medically qualified but even so just looking at Sne’s hand announced that something had to be done! We imagined that doing nothing would have serious repercussions. We decided to do something!

We called one of the top hospitals in Durban and convinced a specialist to give us a free consultation. He said she needed an immediate operation. We asked him what would be the result of inaction in this case. He said the abscesses would no doubt have spread to the fingers and other areas of the hand causing paralysis and ultimately she would have lost her hand!

He then said that the operation would cost ‘an arm and a leg’.

He then said without hesitation that he would personally book her in to surgery and would do the operation himself - for free!

We are happy to announce that Sne had surgery at 22:00 last night. She is expected to make a total recovery. No doubt in a couple of weeks she will be walking on her hands again!

We feel privileged to have been in the right place at the right time and this time it has literally saved a little girls hand. We need this case to be the first of many. In order to do that we need more people on the ground. As the areas we work in are very rural area there are obviously costs involved in reaching these kids.

If you would like to financially contribute to this vital work please see our donations page for more information.