Operation Smile has been providing high-quality treatment and care to patients throughout India since 2002, executing medical programs in 24 cities across the country and extending surgical care to more than 22,000 patients. However, we continue to see a significant number of patients who have never received surgical or multidisciplinary cleft care. We frequently encounter patients with complex cleft and craniofacial conditions whose care needs are more complex than what we can provide in a short-term medical mission setting.
Care centers greatly expand availability of care to patients and their families – they provide our patients with greater access outside of medical missions and simultaneously allow us to take on more complex cases that are often ill-suited for a mission model.
Our centers in India, which are operated in partnership with the Inga Health Foundation, provide ongoing access to surgical and multidisciplinary cleft care in Durgapur, Mumbai, Bangalore and Srinagar.
All four centers are located within larger hospital settings, and at each site, we are provided with at least one operating room and bed space in pre- and post-operative wards. At the new center in Durgapur, we also have a dedicated ward for our patients. This model allows us to share essential resources with the hospital, such as surgical supplies and equipment for the operating and recovery rooms.
Our goal is to enable each center to provide patients with pre-health evaluations, speech consultations, dentistry and nutritional counseling. At three of the centers, we will also provide orthodontic services.
Sources
* World Bank. (2015). Current health expenditure (% of GDP). Retrieved from World Bank Current Health Expenditure: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS
** Carlson, L. C., Stewart, B. T., Hatcher, K. W., Kabetu, C., VanderBurg, R., & Magee, W. P. (2016, December). A Model of the Unmet Need for Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate Surgery in Low-and Middle-Income Countries. World Journal of Surgery, 40(12), 2857-2867.