Surgery for Guatemalans with Cleft Lip and Palate

When a child is born in the United States with a cleft lip their lip is almost always repaired before their first birthday. In countries such as Guatemala this is rarely the case. Almost all of our patients are from remote rural areas far from the big city or even a paved road. Finding them and persuading them to leave the security of home is difficult at best. Don Heebner, one of our volunteers and Board member has photographed over one hundred children many of whom are infants. So he was surprised when he saw Susana for the first time. Susana was holding a towel over her face and Don had to check her folder to see why she was a patient in this surgical mission, which was focused on children. When she pulled the towel away it was clear why. How was it possible that she had not been repaired in 18 years?

Susana was born the youngest of three children, and her mother was not very involved with her children. Her father was even less involved. When it looked like Susana’s mother and father would abandon her, Susana’s grandfather and grandmother stepped forward and said they would raise Susana. Susana had a loving home with her grandparents, but when she started school the taunting and bullying began. Susana would come home in tears from school every day until finally in the third grade her grandparents let her drop out of school. She was homebound until her grandparents heard of a Guatemalan charity called Partner for Surgery that matched children with surgical needs with incoming surgical teams from the United States and Canada who volunteered their skills for free, and would repair Susana for free.

When our team saw Susana there was no way we were going to let her go home without our best effort to make her look like the pretty girl she was meant to be. She was presented with a small mirror after surgery which she used to look at herself for ten minutes at a time. We asked if she wanted her towel back, and she said no, “I do not need it any more“.

Cleft lip patients are held overnight and released the next day. When Don heard Susana was ready to go home he grabbed her camera and met her as she walked out of the hospital, and stepped into the sunlight on a bright sunny afternoon and appeared as a normal 18 year old girl for the first time in her life.

Eighteen years is a long time to wait , but thanks to you and to two amazing charities Partner for Surgery, and Smiles for Guatemala, Susana no longer has to wait in her grandparents house.

Besides Susana, Partner for Surgery and our many teams of volunteers have completed 246 surgeries in the first quarter of 2019 and examined 480 patients.

You are making a difference. Rural Guatemalan families are some of the most impoverished in Central America and your help improves more than their health. Children are better able to go to school, adults can work to support their families and contribute to the local economy. The whole community is uplifted.

Thank you. We could not have achieved these results without you.

The work Partner for Surgery conducts in Guatemala is the result of many people's contributions: donors like you, medical and non-medical volunteers, our local staff and Health Promoters, and the communities where we work. 

In 2018, more than 300 children born with a cleft lip/palate received nutritional and surgical care as part of Partner for Surgery's program. 

With your support, our Health Promoters visited rural communities in Guatemala and quickly identified children born with cleft lip/palate. They placed the children in our nutritional program and started to visit the family to provide support. They gave each mother a breast pump and a bottle designed specially for feeding babies with cleft lip/palate. Mothers also received general education on how to keep their baby healthy until they were ready for surgery. 

Partner for Surgery has the most comprehensive program for babies who are born with cleft lip/palate in the rural communities of Guatemala. Through our immediate attention to nutrition, we are able to ensure the babies can successfully endure surgery as soon as possible. 

While the babies wait for surgery over the first few months of their lives, our Health Promoters will visit their families regularly and monitor the baby's development. Once they have had surgery, we continue to visit them to make sure they are recovering from surgery well.

327 children had cleft lip/palate surgery in 2018 as part of our program. 

Last October, Frank Peterson, founder of Partner for Surgery, and I, visited some of the families of babies who had been in our program. The moms were so happy to show us how well their babies were doing. They walked a long way carrying the children in their arms to let us see them up close. It was a very touching moment for us and a huge boost to our motivation to continue this work.

Thank you for your help! We could not have done it without you.