Operation Smile South Africa (OSSA) is the regional base for conducting medical and educational missions in rural areas across South Africa and throughout southern and central Africa. Operation Smile volunteers provide free life-changing surgery and related healthcare, as well as hands-on training, lectures, and symposiums that help uplift rural healthcare and build capacity.
Operation Smile’s Scarlett Steer says that the North West Provincial Department of Health has played a big role in assisting with the facilitation of the mission to the province-. “We are looking forward to creating some smiles with the help of our surgeons and medical volunteers.”
Steer clarifies that anyone is eligible if they have a cleft lip and/or cleft palate or any other correctable facial deformity, and they are required to attend the assessment at Klerksdorp Hospital on November 23rd to be considered for surgery.
“Medical volunteers will screen patients and those eligible will receive the surgery required to correct their deformities from 23rd to 28th of November,” she adds. “In just 45 minutes, with a simple surgery, we can alter a person’s entire life.”
Steer is jubilant about the mission, as the organisation will also be celebrating its 5th anniversary during the mission. “We are hoping that those South Africans near and far will join us in Klerksdorp if they are in need of the surgery and we look forward to a positive outcome in changing hundreds of lives,” she says.
What are cleft palates and cleft lips?
More than 200,000 children are born with severe facial deformities every year, and it is estimated that every 3 minutes a child is born with a cleft condition. A cleft lip is a hole in the lip that has caused the lip not to form fully. A cleft palate is a hole in the roof of the mouth. In some cases there are people with both, these two facial abnormalities are two of the most common in the world and are usually corrected shortly after birth, where there is sufficient access to healthcare.
Steer continues, “Many parents often don’t know that these facial abnormalities can be corrected with proper care, or they simply do not have access to the medical treatment, so they prepare their children for a life marred by pointing fingers and hushed whispers on their appearance.”
She explains that it goes a little further than the aesthetic appearance of their faces, as often children suffering from cleft lips and palates cannot eat, speak, breathe or hear properly, which has a massive impact on their ability to live a normal life.
“There is an enormous stigma attached to facial deformities resulting in many sufferers being shunned from society, barred from attending school and not accepted as part of the community in general for many they live their live in isolation,” she says.
Operation Smile aims to change this with the missions. Globally, the organisation has given more than 200 000 smiles to children and adults. Since inception Operation Smile South Africa has performed more than 2 300 surgeries across South Africa, Swaziland, Rwanda, the DRC, and Madagascar. “We hope to add to this number during our mission to the North West,” Steer concludes.
For more information about the mission:
Contact: Meagan Stuurman, OSSA program co-coordinator, at 021 481 9165 or 083 858 3742, or email Meagan.Stuurman@operationsmile.org
Watch this clip for more on their work:
Details of the next OS mission
Pre-assessment: November 23rd at Klerksdorp Hospital in Klerksdorp (Oliver Tambo Street, Klerksdorp)
Surgeries will take place from November 24th to 28th, also at Klerksdorp Hospital If chosen for surgery, patients will have to remain through surgery week and post op.
About Operation Smile
Operation Smile is a global non-profit, volunteer medical services organisation which provides free reconstructive surgery to children and adults with cleft lips and cleft palates in over 50 countries world-wide.
Operation Smile South Africa is the regional hub for Southern and central Africa and provides free surgical and educational programmes through partnerships with the Ministries of Health. Their mission principle is: No person, in any community, should have to live with the pain and isolation caused by correctable facial deformity.
The success of Operation Smile over the last 27 years is due to the amazing volunteer, diplomatic, corporate and individual support that the organisation receives. Together with their partners they create change, provide hope and give people who would not otherwise have the opportunity and chance to live a normal life.