Another Medical Milestone

A second successful penis transplant has been performed in South Africa – and the recipient is more than chuffed, even though he’s black and the penis is from a white man.

- Pieter Van Zyl

IT’S one of the worst things that can happen to a man and for 17 years he felt incomplete. He’d lost his penis after complications stemming from traditional circumcision in the Northern Cape and the loss of his manhood affected him so badly he even considered killing himself.

Even though he had his fair share of romantic relationships, he’d back off when things became sexual – as he was unable to give or receive pleasure. So when doctors told him they had a donor organ for him, the 40-year-old man leapt at the chance of a transplant.

There was only one problem: he was black and the donor was white.

Doctors were worried he might not see the organ as his own, which could have psychological consequences but the patient, whose identity is being withheld, had no doubts.

“I’m happy with the white penis – I’ll take it, Prof!” he told them. 

And so the operation went ahead, marking another feather in the cap of South African medicine.

It was the second successful penis transplant in the country and only the third worldwide, and the man who led the surgical team at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town firmly believes operations like these save lives.

“The recipient considered suicide because of his genitals,” Professor André van der Merwe (48) tells us in his office at the Stellenbosch University’s medical faculty in Cape Town.

At one point there were 12 patients on the faculty’s waiting list for penis transplants. Only three remain.

“We can’t track them down,” says Prof van der Merwe – who fears some of them might have committed suicide, based on interviews conducted with the men after they’d lost their penises.