Across the Editor’s Desk
By Michael Autry
Operation Smile is currently celebrating its 25th year of “Changing Lives One Smile at a
Time.” The primary mission of Operation Smile has been, through the efforts of
volunteers, to surgically repair facial deformities in children while building partnerships
that advocate sustainable healthcare systems for children. O.S. is a private, not-for-
profit, volunteer medical services organization.
To date, volunteers have traveled to 25 different countries, having corrected facial
deformities in well over 100,000 children. The focus of O.S. has been to correct cleft lip
and cleft palate deformities, which occur in one out of 500-600 births in the developing
world.
Plastic Surgeon Dr. William P. Magee Jr, and his wife, Registered Nurse Kathleen S.
Magee traveled to the Philippines in 1982 with a volunteer medical group to repair cleft
lips and palates. Upon arrival, they discovered that hundreds of children suffered from
the deformity, and resources were not great enough to treat everyone. So many had to
be turned away.
Being so moved by the suffering he witnessed, Dr. Magee promised to return to help more
children. After a round of fund-raising, and recruiting of more medical volunteers, the
Magees returned with a staff of 18 doctors, nurses and technicians for another mission to
the Philippines. They helped another 200 children, but still more had to be turned away.
Knowing that there were so many more needing help, the Magees began Operation
Smile.
25 years has since passed, and now thousands of volunteers travel to 25 developing
countries world-wide to help offer every child with a correctable facial deformity the
chance to smile.
Local Operation Smile volunteer Joyce Smith has traveled numerous times to developing
countries to help with the efforts that started 25 years ago in the Philippines. Each time
she returns to Coleman, she brings with her the joy and satisfaction of having offered so
many more children the chance to smile. It is all too often that children in developing
countries are forced to live with horrible deformities and medical problems as local
systems are not in place to offer any help. Their only hope is that willing volunteers will
travel from other countries, such as the United States, to offer free assistance.
In November 2007, Operation Smile will conduct the “World Journey of Smiles,” which
involves simultaneous medical missions in 25 countries. An estimated 5,000 children with
facial deformities will be treated over the course of just one week, thanks to the thousands
of volunteers who will make the journey.
With the help of volunteers like Joyce Smith, and the many medical professionals who
offer their services, children living with facial deformities in developing countries are being
offered a chance at having their deformities corrected, and their futures made a little
brighter.