By: Ruth Donnelly
Created on 08th October 2010
We all know the good work that cosmetic surgeons do in restoring beauty and confidence to their patients, but were you aware of the humanitarian work that many of them perform, both in the UK and abroad?
Cosmetic surgery, though rewarding in itself, is often but one string in a plastic surgeon’s bow and all of them will have started their specialist training in plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Many surgeons who offer cosmetic procedures in their private practices will continue to perform plastic surgery on the NHS, treating children with cleft palates, or reconstructing the breasts of women who have had them removed following cancer.
On top of this, there are surgeons who work with charitable institutions such as Medecins Sans Frontières (www.msf.org.uk), giving up their annual leave to work unpaid in some of the poorest countries in the world, offering reconstructive surgery to people who desperately need it but can neither afford nor get access to the sort of procedures that are commonplace here in the UK.
Here we are investigating some of the organisations that exist to offer aid to people in the world’s poorest countries.
Bringing it home
There are some problems that are sadly impossible to treat in third world conditions, which is what Norman Waterhouse and his late colleague Martin Kelly found when they travelled abroad to perform medical aid.
“I’d been to Ghana and we would treat the kids with cleft lips and palates because it was easy,” says Mr Waterhouse. “But there were always kids at the back of the queue that didn’t get treated because their problems were too severe to treat in relatively primitive conditions. Martin and I decided that we would really like to look after those kids who never got a chance, even when people went to treat them overseas.”
Running the Craniofacial unit at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital put the two surgeons in a unique position to be able to tap into one of the UK’s most highly specialised surgical resources – there are currently only around six craniofacial surgeons in the whole of Great Britain.
Using their own money and contacts, in 2002 Mr Waterhouse and Mr Kelly launched Facing the World (www.facingtheworld.net). This charity is aimed at helping children with the most severe facial deformities that can’t be treated in their home country, by flying them to the UK, where they are able to treat them in a fully functional multi-disciplinary paediatric environment.
Of course, the cost of bringing individual children over here for treatment can seem high, especially since the charity also brings over a parent/guardian as well, and ensures that the children are taught English while they are here, to give them greater career opportunities when they return home.
“We are very aware that if you’re trying to solve a global problem of children with facial deformities, to do a small number that costs a lot of money doesn’t look like a very costeffective way of addressing it,” says Mr Waterhouse. “But the cost of not treating them is also very high – both to the local medical infrastructure and to the community. By treating the children we accept, they are able to return to school and are able to make a contribution to their communities.”
Because of this high expense, the charity cannot offer treatment to every child who needs it: “It’s terribly important that we make the right decision about which children will benefit,” Mr Waterhouse explains. “We have to focus on which children stand a chance of integrating back into society, so we do make difficult decisions about who to treat, which can be quite heartbreaking because sometimes kids get turned down.
“So we’ve always felt that we had to use the experience and the publicity from the individual cases to try and effect a more useful model for treating these kids, and one way to do that is to export skills to the countries where they’re needed.”
A few years ago, the charity treated some children from Vietnam who explained that because of Agent Orange – a herbicidal weapon used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam war – their country has an incredibly high number of children with facial deformities. So a linking programme was set up between Facing the World and the Danang General Hospital, whereby Vietnamese surgeons come over to train in UK hospitals, the most severely deformed children are brought here for treatment and once a year British surgeons go out to Vietnam to hold training courses, ensuring that more surgery is available to the children at home.
Mr Waterhouse and his team have grand plans for Facing the World – they hope to set up links with more overseas hospitals and eventually to launch sister organisations in other continents. “It isn’t going to be the whole answer,” he admits, “but what it does do is raise awareness, internationally, that there are these children who need this specialised care.”
Unsung hero
Born and brought up in a very small village in Northern India, Mr Shailesh Vadodaria has had firsthand experience of poverty. Having lost his father at the age of 16, he spent a lot of time with his grandfather, a devoted Ghandian, who dedicated his life to helping others.
Mr Vadodaria trained as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and some of his first work was in rebuilding the faces of children born with cleft palates or other deformities. However, despite a one in 700 incidence of cleft palates worldwide, in India only a very small percentage of families can afford to have the problem treated.
On completing his training, Mr Vadodaria moved to England, where he works as a Consultant Plastic Surgeon on the NHS and offers cosmetic surgery in his private practice. Working here, he became aware of the advantages that most take for granted – in the UK, you never see a child with a cleft lip, because these deformities are treated at birth, free of charge.
In 2001, Mr Vadodaria was approached to accompany a medical team on a mission to Rajasthan, to offer free reconstructive surgery to children in some of the poorest communities in India. Once there, he saw the terrible effects that birth defects can have on a child’s life – many of these children are abused by gangs who force them to beg on the streets, tugging at the heartstrings of wealthy tourists.
This charitable work gave Mr Vadodaria such a profound sense of satisfaction that he continued to travel to India every year, each time taking with him a team of around 50 medical staff – students, nurses, fellow surgeons and anaesthetists. As well as operating on the local people, his team train staff in the hospital, to continue the good work once they have left.
Last Christmas, while enjoying a meal with friends and family, a conversation started up about people’s wishes for the year to come. Mr Vadodaria voiced his desire to launch a charity made up of like-minded people, to raise money and make regular visits to India and the developing world to treat local people.
One of his companions, a chartered accountant, offered to help him make this dream a reality and in March of this year the charity HelpSmile was launched, bringing together medical professionals worldwide to offer their skills to those who need them most.
“In a sense,” says Mr Vadodaria, “I am lucky to have been brought up in the developing world. Practising cosmetic surgery can make you unbalanced in your outlook, but having witnessed hardship in my childhood, I knew that using my skill to help others would provide me with that balance, as well as setting a good example for my own children”.
Emergency aid
The charity Medecins Sans Frontières was set up in 1971 by a group of French doctors, with the aim of providing medical aid to victims of wars and natural disasters. Since its conception, the organisation has expanded to have branches in 19 countries and has treated millions of the world’s poorest people.
Delia Dammacco is an Italian plastic surgeon who was contacted by Medecins Sans Frontières a year ago, just before the Haiti earthquake struck, as they were in need of more plastic surgeons on their team.
How soon after the earthquake did you fly out to Haiti?
I arrived about one month later, on 14th February, when the skills of a plastic surgeon became really necessary.
How many of you were there on the team?
The MSF surgical team was composed of two orthopaedic surgeons, a general surgeon, an anaesthetist and me. We worked very closely with local Haitian surgeons too, but I was the only plastic surgeon.
How many patients did you treat and how?
I performed around 20 operations on victims of the earthquake, treating mainly post-traumatic wounds of the limbs and face. Most of them needed skin grafts or fascio-cutaneous flaps, and about six patients needed high quality reconstructions – we performed one tissue expansion of the scalp for a very significant scalp loss, one orbito-eyelid reconstruction and a nose reconstruction.
Do your bit
The British Association
of Cosmetic Dentists
has chosen Facing the
World as their charity of
the year. ‘Smiling for the
World’ is a programme
whereby proceeds from
teeth whitening treatments
are donated to Facing the
World. To find your nearest
participating dentist, visit
www.bacd.com and you can
achieve the Hollywood smile
you’ve always dreamed of,
knowing that your money is
going towards treatment for
some of the world’s neediest
children.
CS&AG
