'Let the hippo live'

2004-01-02 13:53

Johannesburg - With just two weeks to go before her 35th birthday, former Miss South Africa Diana Tilden Davis, remains positive despite a painfully slow recovery from an attack by a hippopotamus in Botswana in December.

Tilden Davis's husband Chris Kruger said on Friday that his wife underwent her sixth operation at Johannesburg's Milpark Hospital on Tuesday and was still in a great deal of pain.

He said the major consideration at the moment was to prevent infection to the severe wound on her lower leg and foot, where she was bitten.

It was also important that tissue, including veins, surrounding the laceration be given time to heal before skin grafting could begin.

Kruger said the process of reconstruction would take time and that Tilden Davis would spend a further three to four weeks in hospital.

He said his wife was stable and in a very positive frame of mind in spite of the problems.

In earlier interviews Kruger told reporters that Tilden Davis was poling a mekorro (dugout canoe) along a narrow channel in the delta on December 17. As she came around a bend she surprised the hippo which attacked her. Staff managed to rescue her and she was airlifted to Johannesburg.

Kruger said Tilden Davis had been working in the Okavango Delta for ten years and was a highly skilled guide. However, with the recent drought the animals had become stressed by the lack of food and in this instance the hippo made more aggressive by the seasonal low water levels which prevented him from moving away from humans with any speed.

Kruger said the young bull responsible for the attack had been "hanging around" the area for some time and would continue to do so as the last thing Tilden Davis had asked before she was airlifted from the camp was that the hippo be left alone as the accident "was no one's fault".

He said his wife was anxious to return to the delta as she had made it her home over the past ten years and had many friends and colleagues there.

- SAPA