Rare facial cleft: 14-mth-old Hunan boy Kang Kang born with a 'mask'

Updated: 24 May 2010
Share this news?...Click box   Bookmark and Share
Read more on China mask boy   Kang Kang   faical cleft   Hunan  
A Chinese boy was born with a double face, making it look like he is wearing a mask.

On May 17th, 2010, the mother Yi Xilian said with great agony in a local Hospital in Changsha, Hunan province, that her 1-year-and-2-month-old son Kang Kang is suffering from a congenital facial cleft, and his mouth is cracked up to his ears.
 
 The 1-year-and-2-month-old boy Kang Kang is suffering from a congenital facial cleft 
 
 
"It's different from a cleft lip or cleft palate; it's a facial cleft. Not only his face muscles are cleft,
but the inside bones are cleft." Professor Wang said.
 
Mother Yi Xilian and her husband used to work together in an electronics factory in Huizhou, southern China's Guangdong province. However, since she was pregnant Yi quit her job to go home and wait for the birth.

On March 4th, 19 days before the estimated birth date, Yi gave birth to Kang Kang, who weighed 4.62 lbs.

"My family didn't allow me to see my son at the beginning, and I pleaded with my husband to let me have a look. Before they passed me the baby, they told me 'don't be sad, don't be sad', but when I saw my son, I collapsed," said a crying Yi.

Yi said during pregnancy she had three pregnancy checkups in Xiangxiang City Women and Children's Hospital, but doctors told her that the results were all normal.

Professor Wang Duquan of 163 Hospital said there are many possible reasons, like disease infection during embryo development, taking medications during pregnancy, and so on.

Professor Wang said it's the first such case he ever met. "It's different from a cleft lip or cleft palate; it's a facial cleft. Not only his face muscles are cleft, but the inside bones are cleft."

Professor Wang said judging from the current situation the boy is only suffering from the facial cleft, and his intelligence should be normal.
 
 
Mother Yi said during pregnancy she didn't take any medications except some abortion prevention agents prescribed by the doctors at Xiangxiang Women and Children's Hospital.

Yi said 20 days after the birth she took Kang Kang to visit a big hospital in Changsha, where doctors told her that the surgery would cost at least 300,000 to 400,000 Yuan. "We couldn't afford such a large amount, and the kid is already 1 year old and we couldn't wait any longer."

Professor Wang said Kang Kang at least needs to receive two surgeries.

The surgeries would sew up the clefts on the surface skin, the deep muscle, and then reconstruct the facial bones.

Professor Wang said they'll try their best to resume a normal look for the baby, but as they never met such case before, the results are unpredictable. 
 
SOURCE: Quirky China 
 
Editorial Message  
This site contains materials from other clearly stated media sources for the purpose of discussion stimulation and content enrichment among our members only.
whatsonxiamen.com does not necessarily endorse their views or the accuracy of their content. For copyright infringement issues please contact editor@whatsonxiamen.com
Share this news?...Click box   Bookmark and Share
Comments Area ( Total Comments: 1 )
nerp27 Commented on 06 Jul 2010
so what's on xiamen, what seems to be a poor translation of the mother's name. though, i could be wrong, but if her name is Yi Xilianm yi is in fact her first name. so the article should refer to her as ms. Yi. it is possible that i'm wrong and the autthor thought it wise to rearrange her name to suite the rest of the world. also the child is called kangkang and i find that ironic because kang, again, if i am not wrong, is part of the word for healthy jiankang.

anyway if i am correct all i have to say is that a website with pingying in it's title should know better than to butcher chinese with poor romanization. at least at the characters of people's names.