Indian Doctors Save 230kg Zimbabwean Woman

Natasha Tembo, 28, is lucky to be alive after she underwent a high-risk weight-loss operation.

Tembo, who weighed an incredible 230kg, had been told that the operation was 100% risky but in a first for the Asian country, the operation was successful. On top of her being ‘morbidly obese’ she had a heart which was functioning at 20% of its capacity.

According to Newzimbabwe.com a team of doctors at the Care Institute of Medical Sciences in Ahmedabad performed the risky surgery to reduce the size of Tembo’s stomach and changing the digestive system’s anatomy, limiting the amount of food that can be eaten and digested.

While Tembo’s obesity was from when she was a child we have been witnessing a worrying trend in Zimbabwe with people packing on the kilos especially since dollarisation.

As it stands obesity is not currently an important part of the narrative on health and wellness in Zimbabwe. It is seen as a western thing. Where someone gains weight and becomes fat or obese, people call it ‘good living’.

To Natasha Tembo though, we say good luck.