CLAIM: A Zimbabwean doctor, Dr Chris Chivayo, cut a woman’s baby out of her womb at 21 weeks and successfully operated on it and took out a tumor, then placed the baby back in the mother’s womb.
SOURCE: @blavkredd on X (formerly Twitter)
VERDICT: False
With the advance in technology, medical miracles have become common.
Augmented Reality technology takes patient images and other digital information and overlays it onto a patient during an operation to help guide the surgeon’s technique; 3D printing is used to make prosthetics and patient-specific anatomic models, as well as surgical instruments and cutting guides; and there are even Virtual Reality simulations which can be used to provide surgeons and trainees with a safe, controlled environment in which to practise and develop their skills, without the need for live animals or cadavers.
So in light of this: how about fetal surgery for an unborn baby?
A post of X claims that a Dr Chris Chivayo is a ‘Zimbabwean 🇿🇼 doctor 🥼 who cut a woman’s baby out her womb at 21 weeks old, successfully operated on it and took out a tumor, then placed the baby back in the mother’s womb. The baby was later delivered healthy & naturally on time at 36 weeks’.
The post by @blavkRedd amassed 404 reposts and 148,000 views.
Some of those commenting said ‘these are the kind of stories that do not find publicity yet these are the stories that are newsworthy’.
This is a truly inspiring story and it would be strange if it was not covered by any mainstream media.
A simple Google search of the name Dr Chris Chivayo returns the same picture shared on this post. A reverse image search using the picture, returns a number of videos. A YouTube video gives the full story of how a Nigerian born doctor, Oluyinka Olutoye MD, PhD, in 2016 operated on a baby in the womb at a Texas Children’s hospital.
The story was also carried by CNN at the time.
Zooming in on the picture allegedly showing Dr Chris Chivayo also shows the name on the surgeon’s coat and identifies him as Oluyinka Olutoye, MD, PHD – pediatric surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital.
This X account regularly posts these recontextualised images of real people and real events but claiming that they are Zimbabwean. On October 6, the account posted, ‘Meet Joshua Beckford, a Zimbabwean known as the smartest kid on Earth. At the age of five, he was and still is the youngest child in World History to attend the prestigious University of Oxford in England. Joshua excels at science, math, history and foreign languages.’ Joshua Beckford is a British born Nigerian who was accepted at Oxford University at the age of 6. In another post he claimed that a South African doctor was Zimbabwean, ‘Meet the Zimbabwean surgeon Professor Tineyi Mashudu Tsifularo who successfully performed the first ever transplant surgery to cure deafness’.
Conclusion
The claim that a Dr Chris Chivayo has operated on a baby-in-utero is false. The picture shared is of Dr Oluyinka Olutoye, Nigerian born, who did perform the alleged surgery at a Texas Hospital in 2016. The doctor led a team of 21 to perform the groundbreaking surgery to remove a tumour from the foetus’ tailbone. The operation was done at 23 weeks and the baby eventually delivered through caesarean section at 36 weeks.
