On January 1, 2019, in San Antonio, Texas, a boy named Jabari Gray was born with a very rare anomaly - almost all of his body was missing skin.
The skin was only on the head and partially on the legs, but the neck, torso, stomach and both arms looked like pieces of raw meat.
And the fingers were fused together.
Surprisingly, the child survived. Doctors diagnosed him with congenital skin aplasia. This is a congenital defect, when the skin is completely absent in parts of the body, and the organs are covered only with a thin membrane.
After the birth, the boy was placed under a life support apparatus and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for him.
However, the child's parents Priscilla Mondalo and Marvin Gray had a row with the insurance company and got their son transferred to another hospital in Houston.
Surgeons at the Houston Children's Hospital are now preparing to operate on the boy's airways so that he can breathe on his own, and then he will be prepared for a much more complex operation - skin transplantation.
According to the mother of the child, she did not have any complications during pregnancy, and only at 37 weeks, doctors noticed that the fetus was gaining weight poorly. And the very next day, during the examination, the child's pulse slowed down and it was decided to urgently have a cesarean section.
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When the baby was removed from the uterus, the obstetrician immediately noticed that most of his body was missing the skin. With congenital aplasia of the skin, separate damaged areas often appear on the body, mainly on the head. But Jabari's head just turned out to be intact, but most of the body and arms looked like an open wound.
Doctors don't know what causes this anomaly, but it affects one in ten thousand babies.
However, after the child was transported to another hospital, a new team of doctors suggested that Jabari had a completely different disorder, namely Epidermolysis Bullosa or Butterfly Syndrome.
In this rare genetic disorder, the patient's skin is very fragile and is destroyed by the slightest friction. Also, bubbles appear on it, which, when bursting, leave behind a raw ulcer.
This anomaly is even rarer than skin aplasia and occurs in 1 case in 50,000 newborns in the United States.
Since this is a hereditary disease. now both parents of the child are undergoing genetic testing to find out which of them carries this disease in their DNA.
While waiting for throat surgery and skin grafts, the baby is in the intensive care unit and his body is covered with a special material to protect against infections.
Doctors still have favorable forecasts for him, since the child is gaining weight normally, but they are worried about the condition of his fused fingers, as well as his chin, which has grown to his neck.