This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
New York • A group of albino children from Tanzania whose limbs were hacked off by witch doctors now have new lives thanks to American medicine and an international support network.
The four returned to New York this spring for a new set of prostheses to replace ones they first got two years ago at the Shriners Hospitals for Children in Philadelphia. The kids had grown and needed to be refitted.
The amputations were the work of human hunters with machetes who believe that Tanzania's albino children — born without pigment — are ghosts who bring bad luck if their body parts are not ritually sacrificed.
In New York, the youths lived in a Staten Island home under the care of Elissa Montanti and her Global Medical Relief Fund.