Egypt

Expanding Access to Care

To ensure that every child has access to care close to home, we equip the providers within our patients’ communities with skills and resources to deliver high quality care. We build the needed capacity by harnessing the talent and resources that exist within the country, usually in the bigger cities, the hubs, to train providers in under-resourced areas, the spokes, where most patients lack access to care.  

In Egypt, Operation Smile has four hubs in the cities of Assiut, Aswan and Cairo. We have spokes in four locations – at Cario and Ismailia. We work with hospital partners in Cario, Assiut and Minia.

Five-Year Vision

Over the next five years, Operation Smile will address barriers to cleft care in Egypt by strengthening the health system and reaching a high volume of patients in Cairo and in the Nile delta region.  

Operation Smile aims to deliver surgical care for more than 3,000 patients and comprehensive cleft care consultations for more than 15,000 patients.  

Operation Smile believes that health workforce education and training will help us achieve sustainable and long-lasting impact. In the next five years, Operation Smile will become a National Educational Center for cleft surgical training and offer training education programs, such as the Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) and Helping Babies Breathe (HBB). We will also launch a three- to six-month fellowship program in all cleft-related specialties. In partnership with Cairo University and Assiut University, we will expand our research initiatives and take on new research programs on tissue typing and molecular biology. 

Operation Smile and Assiut University had created the cleft care diploma in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Egyptian University to nationally and internationally train junior surgeons the basic and advanced skills of comprehensive cleft surgery and to present them the academic and professional diploma for this subspeciality as the only institution which present such training and certification.

Our Partners

Operation Smile believes that anything is possible through trust and partnerships.  

United Nations Agencies  
Operation Smile works closely with the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide medical care for patients from other countries as part of our Transcending Borders initiative. This partnership has allowed us to transform the lives of patients from Libya and from neighboring countries. 

Universities  
We partner with leading academic institutions in Egypt, including Assiut University, Sphinx University, Cairo University, Aswan University, Alazhar University, Misr International University (MIU) and Suez Canal University. Operation Smile will expand its educational partnerships by establishing a partnership with the top­-ranking private Badr University. Maximizing our long-standing relationships with university partners gives us the opportunity to address skill gaps in the health care sector and to strengthen local capacity.  

Ministry of Health  
Operation Smile has an established relationship with the Ministry of Health in Egypt, which allows us to work and partner with hospitals across the country.