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Operation Smile Everyone Deserves to Smile
WORDS Lisa Axelsson
Every third minute. That is how often a child with a cleft lip or cleft palate is born. This means that one in every 700 babies born will be born with a cleft lip or palate. This congenital birth defect causes not only major difficulties with speaking, but also with breathing, eating and drinking. Children born with a cleft suffer twice the odds of dying before the age of one, and one out of ten children in less developed countries die due to it. Operation Smile, a non-profit, international health organisation aims to help children all around the world grow up with the ability to smile.
Changing lives
As medical volunteers in 1982, Dr Bill Magee and wife Kathy Magee travelled to the Philippines to help children who were born with a cleft. When they arrived, they soon realised an overwhelming number of children were still in need of help. Even though a great deal of surgical procedures was successfully completed, the majority of people who sought help were declined. The Magees saw the need to establish an organisation that would aid millions of people and with that, Operation Smile was formed. In the subsequent years, the organisation has speedily expanded. Today, over 5,400 volunteers are active in the organisation worldwide and more than 220,000 children and young adults have been provided with free surgical procedures.
On these medical missions, 100-150 people will receive surgery and about 300-400 will obtain a full medical evaluation.
In 2006, Operation Smile South Africa (OSSA) was founded and has since officially treated over 4,000 patients. OSSA works on sites in Southern and Central Africa and has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Department of Health in South Africa, Swaziland, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Namibia.
As part of their international medical missions, Operation Smile sends a team of accredited medical professionals from around the world to partner with countries in order to educate healthcare professionals through informal workshops and medical conferences. On these medical missions, 100-150 people will receive surgery and about 300-400 will obtain a full medical evaluation. OSSAs local missions usually last for approximately ten days but this is dependent on the scale of the mission and the size of the community.
Operation Smile South Africa is currently running a project called the Million Bottle Project based on an OSSA volunteer’s idea that one can keep our world clean and at the same time help a good cause. For every one million plastic bottles submitted, K&C Waste will pay OSSA R66,000, enough for 12 new smiles, or one smile per month. Their goal is to collect one million bottles every quarter and OSSA is challenging schools, corporates, private persons and other NGO’s to get involved!
OSSA and Projects Abroad are currently working on a future collaboration where: ‘Volunteers will not only get to meet patients and see the positive results of surgery, but they will also get a deeper understanding of the massive problem that comes with being born with a cleft lip or palate. Mothers tend to be ostracised from their communities, teased and made to feel like they have done something wrong.’ The implication of this, among others, is that it becomes difficult to find children who require reconstructive surgery since a lot of the parents actually keep them hidden. ‘You both fight to grow and you fight to be accepted. Then when you are employable you tend to be prejudiced again. How many people do you know who are employed and have a cleft?’
Baby Karli’s story
Today, Karli is a happy little baby with a big smile thanks to the surgery to rectify her cleft lip. ‘She laughs and plays all day, every day,’ says mother Anerie. Photo: Anerie Pienaar
After having buried twins, and suffering six miscarriages, Anerie Pienaar, 30, from Vereeniging finally managed to fall pregnant. To ensure her pregnancy was a success, Anerie together with her husband Willie, basically sold all they owned to afford private hospital care. On 4 April, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Karli, who was born with a cleft. ‘The second the doctor very casually announced “Oh baby has a cleft” panic set in. I expected the worst,’ says Anerie. She thought she had given her husband another ‘broken’ baby. None of her previous pregnancies, bar one were successful and now the baby she had carried full term was ‘broken.’ ‘But I loved her even before she was born and I never hid my child from the world. I proudly showed her off and took the time to explain why her face didn’t look like everyone else’s,’ explains Anerie.
With the help of OSSA, Karli underwent reconstructive surgery for her cleft at six months old and the lives of her family were changed considerably. Their gratitude towards Operation Smile cannot be expressed in words, which is why Anerie started a community drive for the organisation in her hometown where she collects items for the goodie bags each child receives on missions.
Adva was deeply touched by Anerie’s story and reflects on Karli’s surgery: ‘We got the entire family here and it was their first time in Cape Town. They were so elated! The main reason why it was such a heart-felt story to me was because Anerie was so genuine about it all. Most people would be embarrassed about being embarrassed. Anerie was very much in touch with her pain. By the time the family were given a date for surgery the mother had really embraced the whole situation,’ explains Adva.
Anerie finishes off by saying: ‘Karli is such a happy baby. She laughs and plays all day, every day! For that we have all the people involved with her surgery to thank. Our family is not lucky – we are blessed.’
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