Patient Stories

Immediately after Leudy was born, he was taken away before his mother, Marisol, could see him or hold him.

At 9 years old, Efren’s schoolmates were his worst enemies. He lashed out against his bullies, who constantly target him with insults because of his cleft lip and cleft palate.

“I always wondered why I was born like this and if anyone would ever come to save me."

Cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries gave Joseph the confidence to pursue his education without the threat of bullying

It was March 24, 2012, early in the morning. Alex Guerrero and his wife, Adilia, had chosen to give birth at a private clinic for the first time. This would be their fourth child, a baby boy.

When his second child, Georgina, was born with a facial deformity, Mtengeni never hesitated to show his love and acceptance of his daughter. He felt it was God’s will that his baby was born with a cleft lip and it was his role as her father to care for her as best he could, despite her condition. Mtengeni was no stranger to caring for someone with a physical impairment. Bernadette, his wife and Georgina’s mother, was deaf, and Mtengeni pledged to care for and support his daughter just as he had always done for his wife.

Since 21-year-old Virgilio’s severe bilateral cleft lip was repaired during Operation Smile’s August 2015 medical mission to Puebla, Mexico; her son has experienced a dramatic transformation which extends well beyond his surgical result.

Shocked and heartbroken when her baby Valeska was born with a cleft lip, Zorida received more discouraging news within the first moments of her daughter’s life. No sooner than learning that surgery was possible to repair Valeska’s cleft lip, the young Nicaraguan mother was told by doctors that the procedure would be far too expensive for her and Valeska’s father to afford. The couple was informed that more affordable, possibly even free, surgical treatments could be found in Managua — a six-hour bus trip from their hometown.

When Britany was 4 months old, she received surgery to repair her cleft lip at Hospital San Felipe in Tegucigalpa. However, the surgery was not done by a plastic surgeon and the stitches soon broke open, leaving her with an open wound. Hope was not lost. “I was told about Operation Smile and that they had a specialist team that could do this at their centre. I went there and they gave her a medical evaluation. When she was 10 months old, her lip was repaired again,”

Greth Liseth was devastated when her son, Erick Manuel was born. She had never seen anything like a cleft lip or cleft palate, and nobody could explain why her "Manuelito" was born like that. She couldn’t breastfeed him, and she felt so helpless that she couldn’t feel love for her child.