2 groups give kids the ‘gift of smile’

CEBU, Philippines - Everyone should be capable of smiling.

This is the belief of two foundations that are currently conducting free surgeries at the Vicente Gullas Memorial Hospital on children with cleft-lip and cleft-palate deformities.

“Smiling is amazing. We want every Filipino child suffering such deformities to smile again and change their life forever,” said Ray Lamb, president of Give a Filipino Child a Chance Foundation.

The Give a Filipino Child a Chance Foundation is a non-profit organization that is focused on giving young Filipino children a second chance in life by providing free facial reconstructive surgeries on their cleft lip and palate deformities, their website states.

Dr. William Geoffrey Williams, a plastic surgeon and one of those behind the International Children’s Surgical Foundation (Everyone was born to smile), said that for the past four years in Cebu, they have already operated on more than 200 children with such deformities.

For this year, they expect to operate on at least 60 patients. Their Cebu mission started last January 5 and the event will end on January 17.

“The result of their surgery is totally different. If you take a look at the result, mura ra gyud og wa gitahi,” said Tricia Gullas, VGMH administrator.

“The only thing is we take a lot of care with each patient. We give each patient our very best. So, when you give a lot of care and a lot of time, the results naturally are better,” said Williams, adding that one operation would take three to four hours.

For four years now, the foundations have conducted the mission at VGMH. “The hospital management is very good to us. We meet with them and for four years, Dodong Gullas is very supportive and everyone else here in the hospital. We work as a team.”

 Williams is a diplomat of the American Board of Plastic Surgery and has operated on at least 4,000 patients with such deformities since 1997.

Williams said that in the Philippines, the prevalence rate of cleft-lip and cleft-palate incidence is one in every 400 newborns, a figure higher compared to the United States, which is one in 700 new babies.

Williams explained that one of the factors that an unborn child suffers from such facial deformity is due to lack of essential vitamins and minerals on the part of the mother while still carrying the baby in her womb.

“It is best that a mother should take Folate, Niacin, B12 and minerals such as Calcium,” said Williams, who is currently the president and chief medical officer of ICSF.

Williams explained though such facial deformities are also genetic.

ICSF is a not-for-profit and charitable foundation that aims to provide free corrective surgery in deve-loping countries. It also trains local doctors to enable them to treat their own patients.

The foundation’s vision is to provide free surgery to third-world children suffering from treatable disfigurements.

Lamb said they want this endeavor to be sustainable for the welfare of the Filipino children with facial defects.

“I just love to see these children smile and bring back their confidence after the surgery which is an amazing transformation,” Lamb added.

Lamb added that aside free surgery, they also provide free transportation and accommodation to the family of the patients. (FREEMAN)