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| I took this photo of a sweet little one we had onboard recently |
This week in community meeting one
of our surgeons, Dr. Gary Parker, spoke about cleft lip/palate surgeries and it
was so fantastic that I need to bring all of you into the international lounge
to sit next to me and hear what he has to say!
Cleft lips and palates are one of
the most common birth defects in every country around the world. When a baby is
born in America with a cleft lip or palate, it’s fixed, usually as a little
baby, and life moves on. Done. But that’s not the case in a lot of countries
around the world, like here in Guinea. Babies born with birth defects like that
are often seen as cursed. They are shunned. They are made fun of. Their mamas
are blamed. We had a little one recently who was hidden by her Mom for two
years to protect her before coming to the ship to have her mouth fixed.
Not only is there a stigma that they’ve
been cursed, but it’s also very hard to feed babies with cleft lips/palates
because they often can’t suck well. Their mamas work so hard to get milk into
their little bodies. I happened across these photos of a patient that was
onboard in the past. This Mom brought her set of twins to the ship…one with a
cleft lip and palate and one without. YOU GUYS! Just look at the size
difference! Once these babies are onboard they often have to stay for quite a
while to work with our infant feeding program who work to get them strong and healthy enough to have
the needed surgery! Look how incredible this little guy looks at the end of his
time onboard! I think he’s even bigger than his twin sister! :0)
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| Twinners! |
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| Before the infant feeding program and after! |
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| Ready to go home! |
The most interesting thing that Dr.
Gary shared on Thursday wasn’t in fact about cleft lips/palates at all, but
about our mentoring program. When we do mass screenings to find patients when
we arrive in a country, we expect to see hundreds upon hundreds of people with
cleft lips and palates. At our large screening in Conakry we saw over 6,000
people and guess how many had cleft lips/palates? Go on, take a guess! SIX!!! SIX????
That’s right! A total of six patients. And do you know why? It’s because of the
mentoring program that Mercy Ships does in each country! Six years ago when we
were here, Dr. Gary trained two surgeons to do the cleft lip/palate surgery,
and boy did they! Dr. Gary effectively worked himself out of a job! Which is
EXACTLY what we’re aiming for!
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