U.S. Brigade Operates on Children and Adults with Cleft Lip and Palates
Tribune Article March 2008
Doctors were evaluating children yesterday, who will have surgery tomorrow.
“I don’t know how to explain it as a mother, how grateful I am to see my son. She will no longer suffer from cleft lip and palate thanks to the work of the doctors who freely operated on my son,” Margie Yolanda García, mother of a little boy who was born with his deformed mouth, said yesterday. From the previous Monday came a brigade of medical surgeons from the Inter-American Restoration Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana (IRC), which is operating on children and adults from poor homes suffering from cleft lip and palate. Infants with the disease grow up with nutrition problems, explained Dr. Josefina Beck, who next to her husband Robert, who is also a plastic surgeon, moved from California, USA, to participate in the brigade she has aim to operate more than 40 children with problems with malformations by cleft lip and palate. “We are grateful for the displays of affection especially from the mothers of the children we have operated on and the Honduran population in general,” as tears flowed through their cheeks, infected by the atmosphere of gratitude of the parents of children who experimented with his fellow Gallens.
The U.S. Medical Brigade, which is operating at Viera Clinics.
Her husband, Dr. Beck, said “it was very important for him to help people like those who are coming to seek care at Viera Hospital “because the knowledge I possess I owe to God and therefore I use it by helping those who need it.” In his experience as brigadiers Beck and his wife said they have traveled through Africa. Mexico and South America performing more than 150 cleft lip and palate operations. The Galenos have come to Honduras thanks to the selfless efforts of Dr. Mario Zelaya who has a clinic in the Viera Hospital where he treats patients with orthopedic problems. Zelaya assured that the willingness and willingness to serve the most needy of the doctors of the Inter-American Restoration Corporation of New Orleans, Louisiana (IRC), is incomparable because they even incur all travel and stay expenses. Since Zelaya said, they are preparing the next brigades that confine only health care because last December they were in some slums of the capital where they delivered more than $250,000 in food to the thousands of people who think the parents of family because doctors travel on their own paying for all the cats that involve moving from their places of origin where they have had to leave their offices closed and have time for others said.
Seeing the final product brings a lot of joy to even the doctors. Here they show a photograph of how an adult patient was undergoing surgery.
This work says patients cannot be carried out without the collaboration of the Hospital and Clinics Viera whose authorities have provided the hospital facilities for doctors to care for patients. Malformations caused by the cleft lip and palate psychologically affect the infant because their self-esteem is low due to physical appearance. This deformation also affects the communicative ability of children because it deforms the mouth, so do infants grow with nutrition problems because mothers have to feed from newborns with drippers because the deformation that produces in their mouths prevents proper absorption of food. The surgeries are completely free and only children from poor households suffering from the malformation of the “Cleft Lip and Palate” are treated and in a private clinic the cost of this operation is more than 100 lempiras. When the malformation passes from the part of the small ones’ lips to the cavities of the mouth the doctors call it cleft palate so surgery becomes more necessary to correct the defect. To contact the members of this brigade, interested parents must contact the phone 236-6224 and the mobile 9870-3524 with Cecilia Rivera of the Inter-American Restoration Center by March 14 to make the appointment.
