I had only been in Sierra Leone about eight hours on October 20, when, while trying to reorganize my luggage, my attention was called to a young man walking with friends up the rugged road past our Freetown base. The whole of John Kanu’s back and parts of the left side of his head and face, and the back of one calf, had been scalded with boiling water which had been thrown on him during an argument about 12 hours before. First aid was done by applying a layer of gauze and salve. I had one of Africa Surgery’s helpers, Mohamed Mansaray, take the youth in a borrowed vehicle through heavy traffic to the Methodist Hospital, not too far away where he was admitted and had his pain controlled and his condition stabilized with IV drips and injections. John was fortunate that while the dark skin of his back and other affected areas was gone (about 30 percent of his body showed only pink flesh), most of the flesh itself had not been burnt. At a pharmacy one week later, we purchased a huge roll of gauze and tubes of salves not available at the hospital, and paid to have John remain in the hospital for two more weeks of treatment.
About one week after being discharged, John came to greet me at our base. I was relieved to see that his skin had almost entirely grown back and was even starting to show dots of dark pigment again, a process that I am told will continue.
Tom Johnson, Jr.
Oct. 20, 2013