A four-year-old girl who was born with only one fingerless hand has had a toe transformed into a finger in the first operation of its kind in South Africa.

Image: Western Cape health department
The 11-hour operation at Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town was performed by a four-strong team led by plastic surgeon Mark van der Velde.
It was the fourth time Van der Velde had operated on the little girl‚ named only as Angelique‚ who will spend the next few months working with occupational therapists.
A statement from the Western Cape health department said: “She should start moving the finger and grasping large objects between the new reconstruction and her bone-lengthened thumb.”
Angelique was born with bilateral symbrachydactyly‚ a congenital condition in which there are various degrees of missing and shortened digits.
“Usually‚ symbrachydactyly occurs only in one limb‚ but in her case she was born without a hand on her left side and without fingers on her right hand — apart from a very rudimentary right thumb‚” said the health department.