CAIRO: For the 3,000 Egyptian children born annually with a cleft lip or a cleft palate, life is fraught with hardship. They are unable to nurse and their speech is impaired. Sinus and ear infections are a regular occurrence. Ingestion becomes complicated as those suffering from this birth defect have trouble keeping food in their mouths. Those with cleft palates often cannot prevent food from coming out of their noses. As a result, many are underweight from malnutrition. More discouraging are the social taboos some of these youngsters face. In many countries, they are tucked away with their deformed faces hidden by communities that would rather ignore their existence than include them as members of society. What is unknown to many, however, is that a simple corrective procedure can spare the millions of people worldwide suffering from cleft lip or cleft palate a lifetime of adversity and indignity. In 1982, a group of medical professionals in the United States traveled to the Philippines to perform these corrective procedures. To their surprise, hundreds of families came seeking care for their loved ones. The mission was repeated, first in the Philippines, then in various parts of the world and this group of volunteers would eventually go on to establish an international non-profit organization specialized in providing free surgeries for children with facial deformities, particularly cleft lip and cleft palate. Today, with a presence in 25 countries, the organization Operation Smile is responsible for changing the lives of some 100,000 youngsters and counting. In the early 1990 s, the group broke into the Middle East with a mission in Gaza and the West Bank. Operation Smile held its World Journey of Hope tour, where for 8 weeks, it took a 747 aircraft equipped with operating rooms to treat some 5,000 children in 18 countries. It was the first 747 ever to land on the runway at Gaza s Yasser Arafat International Airport which was later destroyed during the second Intifada. During a maintenance stop in Amman, the aircraft was received by Queen Noor who had taken an interest in Operation Smile s work and looked to invite them to Jordan. In 2000, the first team began its work in the Hashemite Kingdom, and now Operation Smile has a permanent office in Amman. We definitely need support to do what we hope to do, which is exchange ideas with the medical providers here and trace the children who have fallen through the cracks, says Christopher Anderson, Operation Smile s International Development Manager for the Middle East. Its really difficult for them to function in schools - kids can be pretty rough. Parents sometimes are ashamed and so the kids get hidden away. They don t get the education and then it gets harder and harder to reintegrate them into society. So, it s a problem that a lot of cultures don t realize they have because you don t see these kids on the street. Operation Smile had already begun looking into Egypt to set up another of its regional offices. Recently, a group of Egyptian doctors who had partaken in a number of missions with Operation Smile decided to join forces and establish their own organization specialized in the treatment of cleft lip and cleft palate. The Egyptian Society for the Management of Congenital Deformities, or EgyPlast as it was known, began in April 2004. Its founder, Dr. Mohammed El-Shazly, a plastic surgeon with Assiut University modeled his organization based on his experiences with Operation Smile in Kenya and Cambodia. When Operation Smile approached him to combine the two organizations under one name, he did so obligingly. I always liked Operation Smile and respected the idea, so I had no problem changing EgyPlast to Operation Smile, Dr El-Shazly explains. Some asked me why I am sacrificing EgyPlast to Operation Smile. I said that the important thing is that we assist these children with congenital deformities. This is about how to serve our community. The name is not important. We wanted to draw more volunteers, bring educational courses, and do many things in which we felt Operation Smile could assist. We did an education program in November, Anderson explains. A lot of time was spent building up the volunteer group, but we did an education program at Assiut University with 100 participants from all over Egypt. We did some demonstration cases and then lectures for plastic surgeons, dentists, orthodontists and nurses. Anderson says that training has not been one of the major functions of Operation Smile since coming to Egypt. He added that the quality and training of local medical professionals, from plastic surgeons to anesthesiologists and pediatricians, is above par. Egypt falls behind more in its resources, and the Operation Smile Egypt board of directors is now dedicated to raising awareness in those communities which would otherwise be unable to access such procedures. Sometimes, those families cannot afford medical intervention, says Dr. El-Shazly. Sometimes the child lives in a place where there is no medical access. Some religious people say God wanted the child this way and so it is not our responsibility to correct it. So they leave the child. We are trying to tell these people the positive and dramatic difference this surgery will make in their child s life. Administrators with Operation Smile estimate the cost per child to be $240, including medical supplies and travel expenses for the volunteers - a small price to pay, Anderson says, for such grand results. For about $240 and an hour, we can change a child s life forever, he says. Our medical teams are volunteers. Usually they do this on their vacation time, so it s a pretty extraordinary group of people. We are able to do a lot with a little bit of money and this limited amount of time. Medical professionals and mission administrators do not deny the risks involved in any medical procedure, particularly when anesthesia is involved. According to Anderson, roughly one in every 15,000 surgeries has ended in fatality - far lower than the standard in any of the countries they work in. Safety protocol is continuously revisited and reexamined and the group remains in good standing with all of their host countries. Operation Smile does not limit its corrective procedures to cleft lip and cleft palate, though they are the priority. The group has performed a number on corrective surgeries on patients ranging in age from 6 months to 76 years of age. The group is eager to get their mission off the ground in Egypt and hope that with the proper awareness and financial backing. They can continue to, as they say, give kids in Egypt something to smile about. We need anyone to help us, says Dr. El-Shazly. If anyone learns of our organization, pass the world. If someone finds a patient, connect them with us. Those in the medical field who can help us will certainly benefit. Of course, financial assistance will help us to continue our work. Our foundation is only as strong as the community, Anderson adds. We bring everything except oxygen and electricity. Hopefully we will have had our first mission by the summer. A lot of it depends on what the community wants, what the needs are and who s willing to help us meet those needs. Hopefully we ll have more support from the corporate community. We re not interested in forcing Operation Smile on any country that doesn t want it. It really is a locally driven initiative. For more information on Operation Smile, contact Christopher Anderson at [email protected] or log onto www.operationsmile.org.eg.
