TEEN MAKES SA MEDICAL HISTORY
THE doctors couldn’t believe their eyes. The girl had arrived at the hospital looking like an ordinary teenager – but X-rays of her chest revealed something they hadn’t seen before.
Dimpho Dithebe was missing one of the most vital bones in the human body. Where her breastbone – or sternum – should have been was just an empty space.
It’s a bone most people are completely unaware of and yet it plays a crucial role, connecting the two sides of the rib cage and protecting major organs including the heart, lungs and stomach.
For 14 years Dimpho from Dithakong near Kuruman in the
