1000th Smile by D5630 AG Dave Fowler

Posted by Quentin Li 
 
They came for the children.children with cleft lip and cleft palate deformities whose parents could not afford to get help for them any other way.  They were medical professionals and Rotary volunteers from all over the world who joined with Alliance for Smiles in Yichang, China last week.
 

Quentin Li, President Elect of the Vancouver Centennial Rotary Club was on his 4th mission, this time as Assistant Mission Director. He also will join three more AfS missions this year. Another Rotarian from the Vancouver area, Jill Moore, has helped with two previous missions and is scheduled to join the team in Harbin and Huangshi in September and October.

 

Alliancefor Smiles is a non-profit organization that was formed by five members of the San Francisco Rotary Club 3 years ago.  It's purpose is to assemble teams of plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses to do corrective surgery on cleft children. 

One in 350 Asian children is born with some kind of cleft deformity and most of them come from low-income families who cannot afford to have the surgeries done by Chinese surgeons.  Chinese hospitals are just like those in the US.they are expected to make a profit and must charge for their services.  The services provided by AfS make possible the impossible for these families.

 

During the mission to Yichang AfS repaired a cleft lip on the 1000th child since it began sending teams in 2005.  Hao Chen came a long distance..way up in the mountains north of Yichang, China.  The journey took 15 hours but the story really began 4 years ago when he was born with what the doctors describe as a bi-lateral cleft lip.  Chen was delivered by his grandmother in the remote village where they lived.where the family existed on an annual income of $200 US.  Chen's mother and grandmother were sure they would never be able to care for him and his deformity on their meager income and were going to take him to an orphanage but Chen's father insisted they could care for him.  He would go to another province, take a dangerous job digging in the tunnels and try to earn enough more that somehow he could pay to get help for his son.

 

That was 4 years ago.  Then they heard about Alliance for Smiles and made the journey to Yichang, a city of 3-million in Central China where the Chinese had recently completed the YichangPeoplesHospital, a state-of-the-art medical facility that had agreed to host the team from Alliance for Smiles.

 

Dr. Alan Stormo, retired plastic surgeon from Boulder, Colorado performed the difficult job of closing the huge gap in Chen's upper lip shortly after 8:30 a.m. on April 16, 2008 and finished almost 3 hours later.  The change was immediate and dramatic.  Instead of being deformed and rejected because of his cleft lip, he will now look normal after a few weeks of healing.  Because of the love of his family and the medical volunteers who traveled halfway around the world to help, Hao Chen will be able to live a normal life.a life without ridicule and shame.  

 

One of the goals of AfS is to provide treatment centers for children like Chen at various places in China and to help train Chinese surgeons to do the complicated surgery on their own.  Who knows.with the proper education that will start with one team members' contribution.Chen might someday be able to help another child whose life began just like his.

 

My job as medical photographer is to provide before and after photos to document the surgeries.  I am one of a number of Rotary volunteers who go on each mission as record keepers, instrument sterilizers, dental hygienists, quartermaster and assistant mission director.  AfS has openings for all of these positions.  AfS welcomes volunteers and donations.  For more information go to the AfS website at www.allianceforsmiles.org .

 

 

  Dave Fowler.   Past President - Ogallala, Ne Rotary Club, Assistant Governor   District 5630, retired portrait photographer and winner of the 2007 Rotary International Magazine photo contest.