Transforming Care Through Innovation: One Year Later, Adolphe Is Still Smiling 

As any parent knows, kids grow up fast. When Operation Smile first met Adolphe, the bubbly 6-month-old boy wasn’t walking or talking yet. Now, one year later, Adolphe is on the move and likes to walk among the school children coming back from school in their uniforms. 

“I have big hopes for his future. I want him to go to school and get an education so he can become someone important,” said Nikuze, Adolphe’s mother. 

Transforming Care through Innovation 

A year ago, Operation Smile was featured in a film BBC StoryWorks produced for Operation Smile as part of the Beyond the Code series. The film spotlighted its partnership with Microsoft and their pioneering use of artificial intelligence as a tool to advance cleft care. The pilot tool uses AI to evaluate pre- and post-operative images, helping to standardize assessments and support surgeons where specialist access is limited, bringing expert surgical guidance to remote and under-resourced regions.  

The film followed baby Adolphe, born with a cleft lip and palate, and showed how this innovative tool aimed to transform not only his life but also the future of cleft care. 

Care Closer to Home 

Like every parent thinking about their baby’s future, Nikuze had a basic wish for her first-born son, Adolphe. “I want my child to have the best life possible, and I want to do whatever it takes to help him achieve that life,” she says.  

Born in the northwestern corner of Rwanda, Adolphe is one of hundreds of thousands of children born each year with a cleft condition. Thankfully, when Adolphe was about 6 months old, Adolphe’s parents learned about care he could receive free of charge from a nearby hospital that works with Operation Smile. 

At Ruhengeri Referral Hospital, Adolphe and his parents met Dr. Faustin Ntirenganya,  a plastic surgeon and Operation Smile volunteer. After a careful medical screening to ensure the surgery would be safe for Adolphe, he was able to receive the surgery he needed. 

“We are so happy that it could be done at the hospital close to us so we did not have to travel so far. It is not easy for people like us,” Adolphe’s father, Josue, says. 

Operation Smile is dedicated to helping more families like Adolphe’s. The nonprofit has funded a renovation of the hospital in Ruhengeri and recently opened the new OR-unit as part of the strategy to build surgical capacity in the country and to reach the goal to make surgical care accessible within two hours for the whole population. 

The Road Ahead 

Adolphe’s family has moved to another house not far away from the old. Now, Nikuze walks with Adolphe on her back to the little street market down the road – something she avoided before, since so many people stared at him then. Cleft surgery has changed their lives. 

“No one had thought it was possible,” Nikuze shares. “They thought it was a miracle.”