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She was 15 when men threw acid in her face. They told her she’d be ashamed forever.

ReSurge International helped Muskan Khatun reconstruct her body, and now she’s using her voice to advocate for burn and gender-based violence survivors.

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Muskan Khatun was only 15 when she survived an acid attack in Nepal.

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When Muskan Khatun was 15 years old, a group of young men started teasing her on her way to school in Nepal. She found it disturbing and uncomfortable, but they wouldn’t stop.

“I finally told my family,” Muskan says. “My dad confronted them, scolded them, and even slapped one of them. After that, they stopped bothering me for about three months.

“Then, one day, when I was heading to school, I saw them again. This time, they had a jug of acid. They tried to make me drink it, but I refused. In anger, they threw the acid on my face, hands, and chest.”

The attackers were arrested, and good samaritans nearby got Muskan to Kirtipur Hospital, where she was treated by local ReSurge surgeon and Country Director, Dr. Shankar Man Rai and his team. Resurge International is a non-profit organization that provides free reconstructive surgical care and trains surgical teams in low-income countries around the world to increase access to care for people who need it, like Muskan. ReSurge’s team in Nepal has treated 141 intentional burn attacks like Muskan’s over the last seven years.

ReSurge helped Muskan take her life back. But that was only the beginning of her story.

ReSurge International

One teen’s perseverance created historic change in the law.

“As I learned more about the laws in my country, I realized the justice system didn’t provide enough protection or punishment for such crimes,” Muskan says.” It felt like a bigger hurt than the acid attack itself. That’s when I decided to raise my voice and work towards changing the laws to ensure justice for others like me.”

Muskan wrote to the Prime Minister just days after her attack, but got no response. So she took her voice to the public. For two years, she courageously shared her story and advocated for better laws.

Finally, the Prime Minister invited her to his residence. He listened to her experiences and legal ideas, and in just 15 days, he passed a law specifically targeting acid attacks. The law also passed in Nepal’s parliament in record time.

“This was the first time in Nepal that a law was passed so swiftly,” Muskan says. “The new law was very strict, including a life sentence for offenders, marking the most severe punishment in Nepal for such crimes.” In 2021 Muskan was awarded the prestigious International Women of Courage (IWOC) Award by the U.S. Secretary of State for her work to end acid attacks.

Muskan Khutan's awardsMuskan has won multiple awards for her advocacy work.Resurge International

Muskan is not alone. Acid attack survivors around the world have raised their voices to get laws changed—but that’s not the only battle they’re fighting.

Constructing laws is one thing. Reconstructing your burned body is another.

Chemical burns leave survivors with painful scar contractures that restrict movement over the affected areas, forcing them to also relive their trauma every time they look in the mirror or field questions from people about what happened to them. However, burn scars require specialized surgical care, which often isn’t readily available or affordable in most low-income countries.

That’s where ReSurge International comes in.

With a conservative estimate of 10,000 acid attacks each year (many countries don’t keep official records of acid attacks and an estimated 40% of attacks go unreported, according to Acid Survivors Trust International), the surgical needs just for intentional burn victims is significant. Additionally, with 80% of acid attack survivors being women, the gender-based violence aspect of the issue cannot be ignored.

But there’s a gap in surgery accessibility between people in high-income nations, where plastic surgery is often viewed as elective and cosmetic, and those in low-income countries, where it more often addresses critical medical needs.

One way ReSurge is closing that gap is by training the next generation of reconstructive surgeons across Africa, Asia and Latin America, in countries where acid attacks are high. Rather than only sending in surgeons from the outside, ReSurge trains and funds local surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and occupational therapists, focusing on capacity building and prioritizing locally-led solutions with an extra emphasis on training women to close the gender gap in medicine and surgery. Just last year, ReSurge transformed the lives of over 25,000 patients and trained more than 5,000 medical professionals, with 85% of their surgeries being conducted by local partners.

Raising awareness is another way ReSurge is working to ‘close the gap.’

Seeing a potential for a powerful partnership, Resurge orchestrated the first face-to-face meeting between Muskan and fellow acid attack survivor and Woman of Courage Award Winner, Natalia Ponce de León from Colombia, in June of 2024. Like Muskan, Natalia has worked tirelessly to advocate for survivors’ rights and successfully inspired change to her country’s laws. She currently runs a foundation to ensure survivors of chemical attacks get the medical, psychological and legal care they need and deserve. Through the power of mentorship and mutual support, these two remarkable women will be able to increase their reach and amplify the impact of the incredible work they’re already doing.

Muskan Khutan and Natalia Ponce de Le\u00f3nMuskan and Natalia are working together to advocate for acid attack survivors.ReSurge International

Preventing more attacks like the ones that changed Muskan and Natalia’s lives requires a multi-faceted approach, as does care for survivors who are living with the aftermath of such violence. Survivor advocates and organizations like ReSurge International working together to ensure that care is accessible for all is a reminder of what humans can do when we set our sights on solutions and keep striving to implement them in the most effective way possible.


Interested in helping? This giving season, ReSurge is matching every gift for twice the impact. To make a gift to support patients like Muskan, read their stories, and learn more about how ReSurge International is closing the gap to reconstructive surgery, visit resurge.org/closing-the-gap

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The Filipino divers everyone is making fun of are actually total class acts.

John David Pahoyo, a top diver from the Philippines, approached the diving board, bounced twice, and sprung himself into the air.

It was the 2015 Southeast Asian Games, a perfect place for Pahoyo to display his diving prowess alongside other top athletes from his region.

In midair, Pahoyo leaned back, tucked his legs, and began a high-speed twisting backflip.

And then this happened:

SGAG/Facebook

You don't have to be an Olympic judge to know divers aren't supposed to enter the water feetfirst.

Pahoyo's teammate, John Elmerson Fabriga, hadn't done much better in his dive that day either, landing flat on his back:

SGAG/Facebook

Umm, ouch?

After the 2015 Southeast Asian Games, the pair's dives went viral, for all the wrong reasons.

SGAG/Facebook

ESPN called them "the two worst high dives you will ever see."

One video of the hilariously awful performance on Facebook got over 2.5 million views.

During the 2016 Olympics games in Rio, Pahoyo and Fabriga still can't seem to escape the (mostly good-natured) ribbing.

But if you think Pahoyo and Fabriga are hiding under a rock somewhere until this all blows over, you'd be mistaken.

OK, we all agree that these dives are hilarious. But at a certain point, the mockery has to be devastating for these guys, right?

Wrong.

They're actually being great sports about the whole thing.

SGAG/Facebook

Shortly after the initial performance in 2015, Pahoyo posted about it on Facebook. He knew his dives didn't go super well.

He wrote:

"This was the first time I felt this great intense pressure. Hooo, one event is over. One more to go. I failed one dive and the rest of my dives were sh***ier than what i did during the training. But at least it was a nice experience. Great crowd, great people. I can actually tell myself that i overcame the extraordinary"

Later, in response to a video of his performance, he commented:

"I even laughed at myself after i did this dive hehe. but after all this was not the first time i failed a dive, and i was not the first one who did so. And I am still proud because not all of us has the privilege to represent our own country to such a big sporting event like this. And by the way can i ask all of you if you can still smile after getting embarrassed in front of thousands of people? hehe just asking, right?"

And you know what? He's totally right.

There's no shame in failing when you try your best. And the fact that these two men can laugh at themselves in the face of an embarrassment that, let's face it, would crush most of us...

Well, I don't think it's going too far to say that, while they might not be championship athletes, they are still tremendous role models.

Oh, and while the internet was just catching on to Pahoyo's and Fabriga's "epic fails," the two were busy training for their next event.

Agustin Fuentes, Ph.D., wrote for Psychology Today, "Failing at something acts to demonstrate limitations, to force us to rethink or reevaluate how we do things, and to learn how to do them better. It adds a road block, ups the ante, and makes us use our brain, cooperate, and get creative with the world."

Two days and a few extra practices later, the duo from the Philippines competed in a synchronized diving event at the same games.

This time, they nailed it.

(OK, so it still wasn't good enough for a medal, but it was definitely an improvement they could be proud of.)

JD Pahoyo/Facebook

These two may not have made it to Rio this year, but it looks like they got the last laugh after all.

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Oodles of orange and purple starfish have appeared. And that might be worth celebrating.

The Pacific Coast of the United States is just so. damn. beautiful.

Image from Jonathan.s.kt/Wikimedia Commons.

It's studded with tree-covered islands, little hidden coves, and driftwood-strewn beaches. It looks like a postcard. Heck, it looks like where two postcards would go to get married!

And one of the best things about it is the amazing animal life. There are pods of wild orca whales, magnificent sea lions, adorable sea otters, and the king-of-all-that-is-strange giant Pacific octopus. But it's not just the big animals that are awesome; the Pacific Coast's little guys are amazing too.

One of its most recognizable, and colorful, denizens is the ochre sea star.

Photo via iStock.

It's hard to miss their bright purple, pink, and orange bodies — they're like what happens if you let Lisa Frank design an invertebrate. They're a common sight in tide pools and intertidal zones.

At least, they were.

Sadly, a mystery virus has been wiping them out for the last few years.

In 2014, "sea star wasting disease" appeared in Oregon. The disease wasn't unique to ochre sea stars — it affects many different species — but they were hit especially hard. Affected animals get weak and then just sort of ... fall apart. Like they were made of wet tissue paper.

(If you want to see the kind-of-gross aftermath, you can follow this link).

Scientists quickly identified the disease as a type of virus, but that didn't help the sea stars. Since it appeared, it's proceeded to wipe out about four-fifths of the ochre sea star population. It's also spread up to Alaska and all the way down to Baja California.

Starfish help keep the coastline's ecosystem in balance, so losing them could be really bad.

While they might look like blobs of Play-Doh, sea stars are actually the tigers of the tide pool. They eat a ton of mussels; so many, in fact, that when starfish disappear, mussel populations explode to the point of crowding out other species.

This makes starfish what is known as a keystone species.

Like a bomb waiting to go off. Image from Andreas Tretpte/Wikimedia Commons.

But there's some good news! Because although we've lost a lot of adult sea stars in recent years, people are finding a TON of baby stars right now.

Photo from iStock.

Scientists from Oregon State University just published a paper announcing their discovery of the recent baby boom.

"The number of juveniles was off the charts — higher than we'd ever seen — as much as 300 times normal," said lead author Professor Bruce Menge in a press release.

Why so many babies? It didn't look like there were more born than usual. Instead, Menge believes it was because more babies survived than normal, possibly because fewer adults meant more food for the babies.

There's still a mystery though. Why did the virus strike now?

Image from D. Gordon E. Robertson/Wikimedia Commons.

The virus has probably been around for a long time. It's even been found in preserved starfish from as far back as the 1940s. And there have been smaller outbreaks in the past but nothing of this size.

So what's different now? We're not sure. Menge doesn't think it's from warmer ocean temperatures (which has been hurting other areas, like coral reefs), but there are other possibilities as well.

"Ocean acidification is one possibility, and we’re looking at that now," said Menge. "Ultimately, the cause seems likely to be multi-faceted."

Nevertheless, this is a good sign. The Earth can regenerate and heal.

It's too early to say that these new babies are safe, since the virus could strike again, but it's an awesome display of nature's ability to bounce back. Humanity hasn't always been kind to the ocean — we overfish, we dump trash, we pollute its waters — but the Earth is nothing if not resilient.

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