The Smile Train provides free cleft surgery to over 100 children each day.
The average cost for a child’s surgery is $250, all paid for through The Smile Train’s donations.
Surgery on the child can be performed in as little as 45 minutes, less time than most TV shows.
The average age for a child in a developing nation to receive this type of an operation... 6 years (totally unacceptable).
To date, The Smile Train has helped over 300,000 children in over 60 nations.
A child born with a cleft lip and palate is not just a social outcast in their community, but they can’t eat or drink properly and in time, if the operation is not performed within the first two years, they begin to develop poor speaking habits which must then be corrected.
Unlike other organizations that help children with cleft lips and palates, The Smile Train believes in the fish philosophy. Instead of sending our doctors to developing nations for a few months to operate on the children (give a person a fish and feed them for a day), The Smile Train actually helps train doctors who live in those nations on how to perform the basic, simple operation on the children, thus keeping the cost down and having a place year round for children and their families to go to (teaching them how to fish so that they’ll never go hungry). By this method, more funds are used for the greater good, helping thousands of children each year. The Smile Train has trained over 20,000 doctors worldwide to help these children.
These children deserve a better life than what they were born into. For six-years to be the average age of a child to have this simple, everyday operation is totally unacceptable. It is with great hope and prayer that in a short time we are able to significantly reduce that figure by a large margin.
Please visit The Smile Train at... www.smiletrain.org for more information...
