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 Health & Beauty | March 2006 
Operation Smile Treats Tens of Thousands of Children
 Lisa Jardanhazy - Operation Smile
| | United States Contact: Lisa Jardanhazy, Vice President of Communications & Public Relations
(757) 321-3250 |
Operation Smile’s highly specialized teams of medical volunteers have transformed the lives of tens of thousands of indigent children in the United States and abroad as they offer their time and talents to provide reconstructive surgery and related health care to those who suffer the shame and humiliation of facial and other debilitating deformities.
Founded in 1982, Operation Smile is a leading humanitarian and medical relief organization dedicated to helping improve the health and lives of children and young adults worldwide. In addition to contributing free medical treatment, Operation Smile trains local medical professionals and leaves behind necessary equipment to foster long-term self-sufficiency.
In 21 developing countries, Operation Smile’s medical volunteers provide the surgery and supplies needed to repair cleft lips, cleft palates, tumors and other birth defects. During an international mission, Operation Smile can repair a cleft lip in as little as 45 minutes at the cost of approximately $750.
With its world headquarters based in Norfolk, Va., Operation Smile draws upon a worldwide network of plastic surgeons, dentists, nurses, anesthesiologists, speech pathologists, child life specialists and biomedical technicians. In the 2001-2002 fiscal year, these professionals provided approximately $34 million in donated medical services to impoverished children and young adults. As a not-for-profit, non-sectarian organization, Operation Smile also provides medical training and continuing education for health care professionals here and abroad.
With the launch of the U.S. Care Network, Operation Smile now provides a network of resources to assist families in the U.S. with children with facial deformities. This network includes a listing of Referral Web Sites to provide valuable resource information about facial deformities; a Physicians Resource List including the names of doctors who volunteer with Operation Smile and are available to review a case and an Operation Smile representative to provide guidance by telephone.
For its International Mission program, Operation Smile sends medical volunteers from all over the world on two-week medical missions to designated sites in developing countries, airlifting millions of dollars of donated medical supplies and teams of medical professionals to hospitals in Europe, Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East. Those medical teams work beside their local counterparts, teaching them new techniques for repairing facial deformities.
Operation Smile’s international programs are supported by individuals, corporations and foundations. From surgical scrubs to disposable diapers, corporations donate many of the medical supplies used on international missions. Operation Smile spends 8.9 percent of its operating budget on overhead, allowing 91.1 percent of donations to go directly to programs.
“When we go to a place and see hundreds of children who have hidden in shame, and at the end of a mission they suddenly have a new life, we have changed more than the lives of those children,” said Chief Executive Officer Dr. William P. Magee Jr., who with his wife, Kathy, a nurse and clinical social worker, founded Operation Smile. “There’s a power in the volume of children we take care of. There’s a power in the medical training we do that is essential. But the real power is the betterment of the human spirit, the fellowship it creates between people of different cultures, different races, religions and nationalities.”
Operation Smile was founded in 1982 after the Magees traveled to the Philippines with a medical group to perform facial surgery. What they found was overwhelming—hundreds of children ravaged by life-threatening deformities and most of them turned away from treatment. They created a follow-up mission to help the more than 200 children who had been left behind.
Since then, Operation Smile has established chapters across the United States and foundations around the world. Operation Smile currently supports programs in Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, India, Jordan, Kenya, Gaza Strip/West Bank, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam. In addition to offering reconstructive surgery, Operation Smile provides education and training around the world to physicians and other health care professionals to achieve long-term self-sufficiency. |
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