For the first nine years of his life, John Michael was taunted daily by his classmates and neighbors, who made fun of him and called him “Ngo-ngo!” because of a facial deformity.
“Masakit kapag tinatawag nila akong ganon (It hurts to be called that)” says John. “May pangalan naman ako eh (I have a name after all).”
“Ngo-ngo” indicates a slip in the upper lip, a facial deformity John was born with. The palate or roof of his mouth also had a hole up to the back of his nose that distorted his speech (hence the cruel epithet) and malformed his teeth.
John had become the butt of jokes in school because of his deformity.
“Lagi po nila ako tinutukso. Hindi ko nalang sila pinapansin pero minsan po napipikon din ako (They always tease me. I try not to mind them but sometimes I get mad).”
His mother Belinda could not stand her son being called names and being the object of people’s stares. At times, she would rebuke children when she sees them tormenting the boy.
“Bilang ina, nasasaktan ako kapag ginaganon nila ang anak ko. Ayokong napapahiya siya (As a mother I’m hurt when they do that to my son),” she says.
But life changed for John, now 10 years old, in September last year when a team from Operation Rainbow Australia operated on him to close his cleft lip. After the successful surgery, people began calling him by his first name.
“Jon-jon na ang tawag nila sa akin. Natutuwa po ako (They call me Jon-jon, and I like it),” shares the boy, who is from Batasan Hills, Quezon City, with a big smile.
Last Sept. 15, John underwent another operation to close his open palate when Operation Rainbow returned and held a week-long mission at the General Miguel Malvar Medical Center in Commonwealth, Quezon City, the group’s home for the past eight years.
Operation Rainbow Australia is an international non-profit organization based in Perth, Western Australia that brings together a volunteer group of plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and support staff who travel to various parts of the world, including the Philippines, to provide free cleft lip and palate surgery for the underprivileged, mostly children.
It is still not known exactly why a baby develops a harelip or cleft palate but it is believed to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, like medication and vitamin deficiencies. The cracks occur when the tissues that form the upper lip and the roof of the mouth do not join before birth.
One of the first problems that a baby with cracked palate might have is difficulty in eating and breathing. Breastfeeding is also not easy because they cannot suck properly. And because the open palate cannot do its job of preventing solid and liquid food from going up to the nose when swallowing, mothers sometimes use medicine droppers to feed their babies.
According to Operation Rainbow Australia president Wilma Dunne OAM, they first visited the country in 1990 and have returned once or twice a year since then, performing surgery on some 3,000 Filipinos, mostly children, with cranio-facial deformities.
“We come here on a holiday. It’s a very meaningful way of spending your vacation,” says Wilma, who had been conferred the prestigious Order of Australia Medal by Queen Elizabeth in 2004 for her work with Operation Rainbow Australia.
The volunteers, Wilma says, look forward to the yearly trip to the Philippines. “We become different people when we’re here. We have no responsibility to anybody else but this team that we’re working with and the children that we’re working on.”
Though each of the volunteers has a different role to perform, Wilma notes they are “working in the same direction – to help these children have a new life.”
The team is composed of Dunne, nurses Janine Clarke, Meg Twine and Alice Haydow; plastic surgeons Dr. Tim Hewitt and Dr. James Savundra; non-medical volunteers Lin Arnold, Kerrie O’Callaghan and Michael Dunne; and medical student Selena Saykoa.
Three others – anaesthetist Dr. Heather Nath; nurse anaesthetist Marvin Brombough and non-medical volunteer Arlene Mackovic – come from Operation Rainbow America.
The volunteers brought with them all the equipment, medicine and support materials needed for surgery, but their hospital-host provide them with operating theaters, support staff and a ward for the children to recuperate. Apart from doing operations, they also get to exchange experiences and expertise with their Filipino counterparts.
For Janine, it is “very saddening” to see someone still having a hare lip and cleft palate, considering that these conditions could easily be corrected by modern medicine.
“You’ll never see that in Australia. Doctors operate on them right after birth. I feel sad that they can’t be operated on when they were little,” Janine points out, adding that it is “unfair” that these people had to endure the stigma and discrimination when their deformities could have been corrected early on.
But this situation is what inspires Janine and the other volunteers to involve themselves in Operation Rainbow.
“I think because we are so well-off and we have such a good system over there and we have good health care that we would like to give extra care and extra treatment to others,” she says. Janine considers their missions as her way of paying back “for such a good life that we have.”
And the results, she relates, are worth their time and effort. “What we do may appear quite superficial but it really benefits the children. They can look normal and they can go to school and be educated.”
As was the case with John, many of the children who come to Operation Rainbow do not want to go to school because students tease and bully them about their condition. But after the operation, they literally become new people, with new hope and a new outlook in life.
“To save the children and the gratification (that we get) is a wonderful thing. We feel honored to come here and do this,” Janine adds.
To bring a whole team to the Philippines, Operation Rainbow Australia needs as much as A$50,000 per mission. It spends some A$500 for each reconstructive surgery. Each patient is provided with food, water, toiletries and other needs while confined at the hospital, plus a full course of antibiotics.
The group also gives out an instruction manual on how patients should exercise their palate to enable them to adapt to their new condition and to improve their speech.
The volunteers are energized by the fact that some of those that have benefited from their missions pay it forward by helping others.
Wilma says that this year, one of their sponsors is a Filipino mother who has a child born with cleft lip and palate. The child was operated on by a surgeon from Operation Rainbow and the mother, who is running an import-export business in Australia, wants to return the favor.
“She is one of our sponsors this year. She provided water, food, antibiotics, pain medication, toilet paper and napkins… This is her first time and I don’t think this is going to be the last,” notes Wilma.
Many others have jumped in to help, too. The Australia-New Zealand Association (ANZA) of the Philippines provided post-operation care packages, aside from joining the Operation Rainbow team at the hospital during their week-long mission.
For this year’s mission, Wilma says, the team performed some 90 surgeries on more than 60 patients “because some patients had both their lip and palate done.”
Patients started going to the hospital as early as last May to apply and undergo pre-screening procedures like x-ray and hemoglobin analysis. The pediatricians had to determine if the children were healthy enough to be endure the operations.
Wilma says that, regrettably, doctors had to turn away those with poor health. “Often, some children would be malnourished. They have lung infection because their lungs are compromised because they are breathing in air that is not filtered.”
Since 1996, the group had brought four Filipinos to Australia to undergo more extensive corrective surgeries. One of them was a girl who was born without a nose. Another was a 27-year-old man who suffered severe burns when a kerosene lamp exploded in his face and chest. The four all lived with Wilma’s family.
At the General Miguel Malvar Hospital, two-year-old Christian happily runs around the hospital premises moments before he is sedated in preparation for the surgery that would correct his cleft lip and palate, not realizing that his life is about to get a major change – for the better.
His father Christopher, 22, lost no time in applying for surgery for his son when he heard about the mission of Operation Rainbow.
“Matagal ko na talagang gustong maoperahan ang anak ko (I have long wanted my son to have this operation),” he relates. “Ayokong makita siyang tinutukso ng ibang bata na ‘ngo-ngo.’ Gusto kong lumaki siyang normal kaya dinala namin sya rito para maoperahan (I don’t want to see him bullied by the other kids. I want him to grow up as a normal boy, so I brought him here).”
“Helping these people have a new life, have new hope is very fulfilling. When we walked into a restaurant near Sulu Hotel where we usually stay every time we are here, we were greeted by the people there with – ‘Hi, ma’m, welcome back!’ They remember us and it really warms our hearts,” Wilma says.
Like the rainbow, these volunteers from Operation Rainbow Australia truly bring the promise of sunshine to the lives of thousands.