Five-year goal to bring a smile to all

“Our mission is to provide reconstructive surgery to indigent children and young adults with cleft lips and cleft palates, and we also provide education and training to healthcare professionals with a view to active, long-term self-sufficiency,” Anand Panyarachun, honourary chairman of Operation Smile Thailand, told The Nation during a recent interview.

Anand, who accepted an invitation to take up the post this year, said the foundation has a five-year plan to fill gaps in the healthcare system when it comes to surgery for children and young adults with cleft lips and palates, and to do so right across the country.

“I first knew about the foundation in 1996, when I was on the jury for a human-rights award called the Conrad N Hilton Humanitarian Prize. Dr Bill Magee, founder of the Operation Smile Foundation, won the award,” he said.

Anand said he then suggested to Dr Magee that he visit the Kingdom and help Thai children and adults with cleft lips and palates.

As a result, the Operation Smile Foundation in 1997 began to help Thais in collaboration with Phramongkutklao Hospital, which supports medical volunteers in the treatment of patients with cleft lips and palates.

That year, the foundation undertook reconstructive surgery on 400 patients in Bangkok and Yasothon provinces, since which time it has returned to treat many children and young adults with the help of medical volunteers every year.

In 2001, Operation Smile Thailand was registered and established as an official charitable medical foundation to provide help to indigent patients in remote rural areas across Thailand.

Owing to the tireless devotion of its medical volunteers, non-medical volunteers and its own staff, more than 9,000 patients have received life-changing surgeries in Thailand over the past nearly two decades.

As Operation Smile Thailand Foundation’s honorary chairman, Anand’s target is that by 2019 all Thai children and young adults with cleft lips and palates will have benefited from reconstructive surgery.

According to a survey by Operation Smile Thailand, some 2,000 babies are born every year with a cleft lip or cleft palate – a statistic that does not include the hill tribe and refugee populations living in Thailand, for which the numbers are unknown.

Although Thailand’s health system can provide surgery for these conditions, it is unable to cover all patients’ needs, which is where the foundation plays such a crucial role.

It aims to fill the gap in the system and provide support around the country to ensure that all those born with a cleft lip or palate get the right treatment when they need it, said Anand.

Following the goal to provide reconstructive surgery for all cleft lip and palate patients nationwide, the foundation’s five-year target is being conducted under the “Bright Smiles & Happy Hearts” campaign.

The campaign will be introduced over the course of the first year, during which Operation Smile Thailand will also create the necessary medical network and database to support the goal, said the former prime minister.

The next step in the second year will be training medical volunteers and medical staff in how to treat cleft lips and palates.

In the third year, the foundation will follow up and assess progress, with the final two years of the campaign being the period in which operations are expanded to cover the entire country.

“We believe that in 2019 we will cover and provide reconstructive surgery for all cleft lips and palates nationwide, bringing bright smiles and happy hearts for all the children and their families,” said the honorary chairman.

“When we see children with cleft lips and palates benefiting from reconstructive surgery and being able to smile and have a normal life like other children, it makes you feel the world is bright – and their families are also happy, as am I. This is my challenge,” said Anand.