{{Operation smile is a global non-profit medical group that provides free reconstructive surgery to children and adults with cleft lips or cleft palates in dozens of countries worldwide.}}<\/p>\n
Operation Smile\u2019s Rwanda team is made up of volunteer doctors from 10 different countries. They perform reconstructive surgery for people with cleft palates or cleft lips.<\/p>\n
A cleft lip is a hole in the lip that has caused the lip to not fully form, and a cleft palate is a hole in the roof of the mouth.<\/p>\n
Patients from every corner of Rwanda made the journey to the capital of Kigali for a chance at this procedure. Emmanuel whom is seven months old, is the youngest patient at Kigali\u2019s Central University Hospital.<\/p>\n
South African Conrad Pienaar,is the plastic surgeon who will be performing some of these operations, in one of his operations, he describe the operation to a journalist from VOA what happens once a patient is under anaesthesia .<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m repairing a kiddy with a cleft pallet. He had a bi-lateral or unilateral-cleft lip, as well as palate, and on one of the previous missions his lip has been repaired and now the second stage is closing up the whole palate.”<\/p>\n
“This one is going very well and we\u2019re almost done. We wonder why do we close up the palate and there\u2019s essentially three reasons: the palate is very important for normal speech; and for eating and drinking; an then also for hearing,\u201d said Pienaar.<\/p>\n
Rwandan patients who do not have access to advanced surgeries can benefit from Operation Smile.<\/p>\n
Dr. Amie Lokulutu of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the Regional Director for Operation Smile. He said the organization\u2019s missions throughout the world, including those in Rwanda and other parts of Africa, have been a success.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve been in Rwanda since 2009. We\u2019ve already performed two missions and this is the third one, surgeries for about 200,000 patients around the world in 60 countries, 13 African countries have already been succesful” he said.<\/p>\n
Here in Rwanda, Operation Smile has performed more than 500 surgeries to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Operation smile is a global non-profit medical group that provides free reconstructive surgery to children and adults with cleft lips or cleft palates in dozens of countries worldwide.}} Operation Smile\u2019s Rwanda team is made up of volunteer doctors from 10 different countries. They perform reconstructive surgery for people with cleft palates or cleft lips. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[75],"byline":[274],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-homenews","byline-fiona-gasana"],"bylines":[{"id":274,"name":"Fiona Gasana","slug":"fiona-gasana","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":274,"name":"Fiona Gasana","slug":"fiona-gasana","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}