Mark Climie-Elliot with club member Vince Campbell
This week we heard from Mark Climie-Elliot from Operation Smile Canada. Mark told us that Operation Smile was founded in 1982 by Bill and Kathy Magee with international headquarters currently located in Virginia, USA. Bill is a world recognized plastic surgeon and his wife a nurse and social worker. Mark told us that world-wide one in seven hundred children are born with this condition and that more people die each year from this condition due to lack of surgical care than die from Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV combined. Cleft lip and palate can cause severe feeding problems in newborns and young children and many simply starve to death without care.
He said that Operation Smile has a worldwide network of teams of medical personnel who work to train local people and build operating rooms and equip hospitals to provide wrap around care for children with cleft lip and palate. They currently operate in thirty-six countries with one hundred and eighty facilities. Many of the hospitals that they use are Rotary sponsored. Their teams consist of about forty-five percent local personnel with the remainder coming from all over the world. These people provide their time and skill free of charge with Operation Smile covering their travel and living expenses. This care covers everything from providing pre-surgical nutrition to surgical care, which may include multiple surgeries over several years, orthodontic work, physical therapy, speech therapy, psychosocial care, family counselling and much more. This care can be ongoing up to the age of eighteen for some. Many of these children and their families also suffer from the social stigma of local superstition as this common deformity is considered to be a curse in many third world countries. This surgery can be life-changing for both the children and their families.
Mark told us that there are currently about five million people with untreated cleft palate with no access to safe surgery in their local area. He said that just over two million of these are in countries where Operation Smile serves. Operation Smile currently has a ten-year plan to help one million of these. Our donations mean the world to these children and their families. He hopes that our club will consider supporting them. We can also make individual donations through their website at operationsmilecanada.ca.