A 40-year-old man in South Africa has had a successful penis transplant, marking the world’s third successful procedure.
The process was performed by doctors from Stellenbosch University (SU) and the Tygerberg Academic Hospital in Cape Town.
This is the second successful penis transplant in South Africa after the first operation in December 2014 by the same team.
The 40-year-old recipient had lost his penis 17 years ago due to complications after traditional circumcision.
The doctors, led by Professor André van der Merwe, used nine and a half hours to perform the transplant on April 21, according to local news portal Health24.
“He is certainly one of the happiest patients we have seen in our ward. He is doing remarkably well … There are no signs of rejection and all the reconnected structures seem to be healing well,” Van der Merwe said.
Within six months, the recipient will regain full functions of his new organ which has a colour discrepancy because he is a black man and the donor is white.
“Unfortunately, we could not find a donor of the same race. In this case, the donor is white and the recipient is black,” one of the team members Dr Amir Zarrabi told reporters, adding that the colour inconsistency will be later corrected with medical tattooing.
Dr Zarrabi hopes that they will perform more successful transplants in the future.
“The loss of a penis from traditional circumcision is big, and we want to create sustainable programmes to help these people,” he added.
The second penis transplant in the world was performed in May 2016 on a 64-year-old man at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA.