Mission Summary

India

Rajkot, India: January 17- 23, 2009

An Operation Smile team of more than 20 medical and non-medical volunteers volunteered their time in Rajkot, India, to provide free medical evaluations and surgery to children born with facial deformities. The Operation Smile team of plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, dentists, a speech therapist, and others worked at Wockhardt Hospital. These medical professionals from Australia, the Philippines, and the United States worked with their in-country Indian counterparts to provide patients with free physical examinations and 45 life changing surgeries.

This was Operation Smile’s first international medical mission to Rajkot, and Operation Smile’s first international medical mission of the New Year. Since Operation Smile's first mission to India in 2002, volunteers have provided free physical examinations to more than 4,200 patients and life-changing surgery to more than 1,700 children and young adults during international medical missions throughout the country.

First international mission: 2002
International mission sites: Bolpur, Deesa, Dharamsala, Guwahati, Himachal Pradesh, Jamshedpur,  Kolkata, Manipal, Rajkot, Vijayawada
Local mission sites: Kolkata, Deesa