The World’s biggest reconstructive surgery group is coming back to Cebu in June to bring smiles to the faces of children suffering from facial deformities.
Roberto Manzano, Operation Smile country director of development, said their campaign is especially focused on eradicating cleft lip and cleft palate among children.
“When you encounter these children, you will fell their sense of hopelessness. They are poor and they need surgery,” he said in yesterday’s Cebu visit.
Manzano said Operation Smile is now looking for 150 patients who would avail of this year’s mission scheduled from June 15 to 19 at the Miller Hospital located along N. Bacalso Avenue in Cebu City.
Screening of applicants is scheduled on June 14 at the H.W. Miller Memorial Sanitarium and Hospital where the first Operation Smile mission in Cebu in 1998 took place.
Inquiries on this year’s mission may also be coursed through the Mariquita Salimbangon-Yeung Charity Foundation, Inc. at telephone number (032)231-11829.
Manzano said they will also help non-Cebu patients by shouldering their accommodation and fare expenses during their scheduled operation.
Manzano said this year’s mission is their biggest so far because these will be simultaneously done in five different areas of the country – Cebu City; Bacolod City in Negros Occidental; Davao City;
Bacolor in Pampanga; and Sta. Ana in Manila – targeting a total of 750 patients.
He said that over 5, 000 foreign volunteers mostly reconstructive surgeons from 80 countries will be joining this year’s “Mega Mission.”
Foreign volunteers are expected to arrive in the country in the second week of June while their deployment to their assigned areas is scheduled on June 12.
In Cebu, Operation Smile has treated 3,601 children so far.
Manzano said facial deformities are either congenital or a result of malnutrition among children. But this can be corrected through reconstructive surgery./DAY DESK EDITOR DORIS C. BONGCAC
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