Some of the most astonishing medical breakthroughs have had an African connection. On 3rd December, 1967, Christiaan Barnard, a white South African, performed the world’s first successful human to human heart transplant. His patient, Lois Wahskansky, suffered from diabetes and a heart disease that had been declared incurable. Christiaan had, at that stage, successfully carried out a number of heart transplants on dogs. The heart that Mr Wahskansky received was donated by a young woman who had been pronounced brain dead following a road accident in Cape Town a day prior to the historic heart transplant operation. The operation took nine hours and had thirty medical personnel in attendance.
Wahasansky survived the operation, becoming the first person on whom a heart transplant had successfully been performed. But the survival was relatively short lived. The patient died 18 days later, succumbing to pneumonia which resulted from the immunosuppressive drugs he was taking to help the body stop its natural fight against the new heart, like our bodies fight any foreign bodies in their systems. Barnard’s subsequent heart transplant patients lived for longer periods.
The heart transplant marked an important milestone in surgery. Another important milestone was marked by the first successful separation of conjoined twins joined at the head. This was performed by a person also with an African connection, albeit in the sense of ethnicity. Ben Carson, an African American, performed this intricate operation on German infants in 1987. Both infants survived but had neurological disorders
In 1997, Ben Carson travelled to South Africa to lead a team of Zambian and South African specialists in the delicate operation to separate conjoined twins, 11 month old Luka and Joseph Banda from Zambia. The Banda brothers had their heads joined at the back and they faced in opposite directions. Although they did not share the intricate brain tissue, they did share some major blood vessels, making the operation a very delicate one indeed. The operation lasted 28 hours after which period the two boys were successfully separated and they survived. They live separate lives now.
Benjamin (Ben) Carson defied many odds in his life. Along with his brother, Curtis, he was raised by a single parent: their mother, who had separated from their father. Ben could not spell any word or answer any question in class, and would bring home school reports that made awful reading. Everybody in his class used to ridicule him, calling him “the dumbest kid in the world”.
Sonya Carson, Ben’s mother, was probably the single most important influence on his life. She raised her boys in a very strict but loving manner. She once declared that they would no longer watch television in their home, except for two pre-selected programs per week. The boys were debarred from playing outside the home with friends. Instead they were supposed to read two books from the library each per week. Sonya demanded that they should summarise each book for her to assess. She had had little education herself and could hardly read but she nevertheless pretended that she understood the book summaries.
The wonderful mother always encouraged her boys to try their best. She told them, “Anything that anybody can do, you, can also do – only you can do it better.”
As the boys were walking to school one morning, Ben noticed a piece of rock that looked different from the rest, on a footpath where quarry stone had been placed. He picked up that piece of rock for closer examination. At the library, he asked for a book on rocks and got it.
One morning, a teacher brought a piece of rock to class and asked the class if they could recognize it. You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed. Ben hesitantly raised his hand, and everybody expected that he would say something stupid.
“It is obsidian,” he said, “and it is formed by the super-cooling of lava when it hits the water.”
“You are absolutely correct,” the teacher said with a tone of surprise. “Benjamin, that is absolutely, absolutely right.”
From then on, Ben Carson began to fly. His grades improved tremendously. Two years later, he was the best pupil in his class, and he never looked back. He went on to study at Yale University for his B. A. and the University of Michigan for his M. D. At 33 Dr Carson became the youngest person to hold the position of Director at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has received many accolades in his life, including 38 honorary degrees.
We can search within our own continent and our own ethnicity for flashes of brilliance. Barnard and Carson are outstanding examples.