Operación Sonrisa (Operation Smile) Honduras
The FIDI Board unanimously approved Operación Sonrisa (Operation Smile) Honduras as the new official FIDI Charity. The project chosen as the cause was considered as having the most potential to make a tangible difference to the lives of vulnerable people in deprived communities.
Starting from small beginnings in 1997, Operación Sonrisa Honduras has made great strides in improving the lives of children with devastating facial malformations. Since then, the organisation has provided more than 25,000 clinical interventions for children, and some adults, that include consultations with plastic surgeons, dental hygienists, speech therapists, paediatricians and physiologists. More than 3,750 operations have been carried out on children who were born with cleft lip and cleft pallet malformations, something particularly prevalent in Honduras.
The charity’s aim is to eradicate this condition. Operación Sonrisa Honduras wants to raise US$150,000 through the FIDI Charity, to help 150 patients and their families. The charity holds several missions throughout the year where it tries to reach as many patients as possible, putting them through a screening and evaluation process to determine, among other things, if their nutrition levels are adequate to allow surgery to take place.
Alongside these missions, the charity operates a clinic all year round which, in conjunction with a countrywide door-to-door census, aims to determine where untreated patients live and bring them into the clinic to operate. Each patient needs this surgery if they are able to feed properly as a baby. And, if they survive to the age of two, they need further surgery to avoid environmental infections. As they grow, children also have psychological problems to contend with, as they are often bullied and ridiculed by their communities. Although the reason for these malformations has not been determined, most patients born with this condition come from families living below the poverty line.
Bernardo Villars, MD of FIDI Affiliate Grupo Gamundi in Honduras, proposed this as the official FIDI Charity. He acts as secretary for Operación Sonrisa Honduras and has worked as a volunteer for this good cause, along with his mother.
Villars said: ‘It has been a passion for us as we have a direct effect on our country’s children and by improving, not only their lives, but those of their families and communities they come from. 'The organisation has funding from several private companies in the country, Mudanzas Gamundi being one. The special project for eradication should be concluded within two years at most, before expenditure to maintain the clinic and our mission returns to its normal level.’
For more information, visit: honduras.operationsmile.org/ or www.facebook.com/ Operación sonrisahonduras?fref=ts ■
