Gifted hands too
Dr Bvulani with one of the Siamese twins named Mapalo. Dr Bvulani with the twin girls. Bonding time with the doctor. Pictures by JACK ZIMBA. Gifted hands too JACK ZIMBA, Lusaka WHEN Bruce Bvulani was a little boy he had a fascination with frogs. He kept some in the backyard of his parents’ house and, later, when he learned how to stitch cloth at school, he would cut open the frogs and stitch them up again. Of course, the poor creatures never lived through the gory procedure. Today, Dr Bvulani’s subjects are not little frogs, but little humans. He is one of only four paediatric surgeons in the country. With Zambia’s population of children estimated at eight million, it makes him responsible for two million children, theoretically. And as head of unit neonatal and paediatric surgery at the country’s biggest health facility, the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), Dr Bvulani was the lead surgeon in the operation that separated conjoined twi