Operation Rainbow holds free cleft lip, palate surgeries

A group of medical professionals from Operation Rainbow Australia Limited will hold a week-long mission to put a smile on the faces of Filipino children with cleft lip and cleft palate.

Wilma Dunne, said Operation Rainbow Australia president, said they are set to perform some 90 surgeries on more than 60 patients in this year’s mission that ends this weekend.

“Everyone in this team has a different role to perform. We have nurses, surgeons and non-medical staff but we are working in the same direction – that is to help these children,” she said.

Some patients undergo surgeries for both cleft lip and cleft palate while others, whose gaping hole on the lip had already been closed, are merely operated on for the gap in their palate.

The surgeries will be done at the General Miguel Malvar Medical Foundation Hospital along Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City, which serves as the group’s home for the past eight years.

Even before the team arrives, prospective patients are screened by the hospital staff. For this year, the patients started coming in as early as last May.

Dunne said the hospital’s pediatricians conduct a “physical assessment” of the children who are required to undergo chest X-ray and hemoglobin analysis to ensure that they could stand the major operations.

“Often, the children would be malnourished or at the time they have been seen by the pediatrician here, they have developed lung infection,” she said.

“Their lungs are compromised because they are breathing an air that is not filtered. They have a hole on their faces.”

Based in Perth, Operation Rainbow Australia is an international non-profit organization composed of a volunteer group of plastic surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and support staff that provide free facial and reconstructive surgeries to various countries, including the Philippines.

The group has been coming to the Philippines every year since 1991 and it had already performed surgeries on some 3,000 patients.

For Janine Clarke, a volunteer nurse, it is “not fair” to see a grown up individual with facial deformities like cleft lip and cleft palate because these conditions are easy to repair.

“It’s sad that they don’t get operated on when they were little. You’ll never see that in Australia. Right after birth, they undergo operations. What we do is quite superficial but it really benefits the children. They can look normal, they can go to school and be educated. They can smile,” Clarke added.        – Sheila Crisostomo