Operation Smile Philippines is adopting the
public-private partnership approach to expand its capabilities to treat more
Filipino cleft children, the organization’s president and executive
director, Roberto Manzano, said today in
a press statement.
Mr. Manzano issued the statement at Dusit Thani Manila
during a press briefing on the month-long medical mission that Operation Smile
volunteers from 37 countries are mounting in nine cities across the country to
mark the global celebration of the organization’s 30th anniversary.
Operation Smile founders Dr. William and Kathleen
Magee flew to Manila from the U.S. to personally lead the mission and the
celebration. The couple founded
Operation Smile in 1982 following a mission in Naga City where they saw the
gravity of the cleft problem.
“If there’s any lesson we’ve learned during the past
30 years, it’s that we have to work closely together. The oral cleft problem is so huge that no
single entity, private or public, can address it alone. We need to pool our resources together,” Mr.
Manzano stressed.
Operation Smile has offered to share its three decades
of experience in medical missions to the Department of Health and, as an initial
step, will turn over its Global Standards of Care to the country’s health
officials.
The Global Standards of Care, which Operation Smile
has painstakingly developed at a huge investment over the years, set forth
stringent rules in the conduct of cleft surgery to ensure that indigent
patients anywhere in the world receive only the best and safest care available.
The standards cover the 14 critical areas in
performing surgeries in a mission setting, from pre-qualifying surgery
candidates to making sure the appropriate equipment and facilities are
available to forming the right medical team with the proper credentials to
documenting the treatments.
Using this template, the DOH can formulate policies
and regulations governing similar medical missions to protect the welfare of
the intended beneficiaries.
The Philippine Regulatory Commission, a DOH-attached
agency, has cited Operation Smile as a model in the conduct of medical missions
because of the systems it had put in place to standardize procedures.
The planned turnover of the Global Standards of Care
signal Operation Smile’s intention to forge closer ties not only with public
health officials but also with local government units, private groups and local
and international non-governmental organizations in dealing with the oral cleft
problem in the country.
Oral cleft is among the top 12 congenital defects in
the country. One in every 500 or an estimated 4,000 Filipinos are born every
year with a harelip, a cleft palate or both.
Unknown to many, the deformity contributes to the high
infant mortality rate in developing countries.
Data gathered by Operation Smile showed that 10 percent of cleft
children or 400 die before reaching their first birthday and 12 percent or 480
do not live past the age of five.
“We want to reach these unfortunate children so we can
treat them at an early age. Unfortunately, the Philippines has no cleft
registry so it’s difficult to locate them,” Mr. Manzano said.
The situation might be remedied soon however as Smart
Communications and the Ateneo Java Wireless Center have developed an
application for Operation Smile Philippines that would enable social workers to
document cleft births and send the records to a central database using a mobile
phone.
Mr. Manzano said Operation Smile Philippines has
tapped SPECTRUM, a non-governmental organization in Saranggano Province, to
pilot test the application. If the test
proves successful, the OpSmile mobile app would soon be made available to
Android phones.
Operation Smile Philippines has also inked a tie-up
with Philippine Airlines (PAL) to fly volunteers to mission sites around the
country at non-revenue rate.
Owing to the archipelagic nature of the Philippines,
transport cost represents a huge expense for the organization, Mr. Manzano
said, adding that the cost savings from the PAL tie-up will allow Operation
Smile to either add more medical missions or to build more cleft care centers.
“Either way, we increase the number of cleft children
we can treat,” Mr. Manzano said.
A cleft care center is a permanent facility where
Operation Smile volunteers can perform reconstructive surgeries or provide
consultation services or post-operative care to cleft patients year-round.
Operation Smile Philippines has so far set up two.
The first, the Mindanao Cleft Center housed at the
Brokenshire Hospital in Davao City, was put up in partnership with a private
non-profit organization. The second, the
Manila Cleft Center at the Sta. Ana Hospital in Manila, was established in
partnership with the city government.
“This is the kind of public-private partnership that
we envision Operation Smile to engage in here in the Philippines in the years
ahead,“ Mr. Manzano said.
“We can equip the DOH’s social workers with the Smart
app phones and train them. Once we know where the cleft children are
concentrated, we can fly our volunteers on PAL to those places or, if the
numbers warrant it, even put up a cleft center there with the help of the local
government unit or another private group,” Mr. Manzano said.
Operation Smile is ready to partner with any reputable
organizations, be they public or private, local or international, to make cleft
care readily available to those who can least afford it, he added.
