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Medical Trips Program

medical_trips.jpg: for medical trips general

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child_in_china.jpg: Child in halo in China

As part of its ongoing mission to provide quality medical care to children in need, regardless of where they live, Healing the Children Missouri organizes volunteer medical teams who travel to other countries to provide surgical care, as well as on-site education and training for local medical personnel.

Teams of doctors, nurses, techs and translators pay their own way and take a week off work to reach out to children in other countries who do not have access to the specialty care they need. Medical supplies are donated by local hospitals and equipment companies as these resources are scarce in the poor communities where the teams provide care. The work is grueling but the rewards are great as the team members know they are providing life-changing care to kids whose conditions would be left untreated if not for their volunteer efforts.

China

Orthopedic Surgery

HTC sends a surgical team to Soochow University Children's Hospital in Suzhou, China each year where specialists focus primarily on scoliosis patients, but also perform surgeries on children with other orthopedic problems. The trip provides an opportunity to share advanced U.S. pediatric orthopedic surgery techniques with Chinese surgeons and specialists as well as to provide life-changing surgery to many poor children. Having worked with the Suzhou Children's Hospital over a period of years, HTC is proud of its part in helping to establish a pediatric spine clinic which will serve as a model for all of China.

Guatemala

Neurosurgery

Each year since 2006, HTC medical team members have embarked on a medical mission to Guatemala to treat children who have been identified as candidates for life-saving or life-altering neurosurgical procedures.

The trip is extremely gratifying for team members who understand the desperate circumstances these children and parents find themselves in. Considered to have among the poorest health care statistics of any Latin American country, Guatemala sees a high incidence of neural tube defects in its children. An already stressed medical infrastructure in Guatemala leaves indigent children born with such conditions largely untreated.

Dozens of children have received life-saving surgeries through HTC MO's neurosurgical trips to Guatemala, thanks to the dedicated medical teams who believe children around the corner and around the world deserve a chance for hope and healing.

Donations may be made specifically in honor of HTC's Medical Trips program. Donate

Lao Cleft Care Project

Since 2007, Healing the Children has funded the Lao Cleft Care Project, led by Dr. Jeffrey Marsh, head of Kids Plastic Surgery at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis, to assist Laotian health care professionals in the management of cleft lip and palate anomalies.

The three-year project objective is to assist in the training of Laotian anesthetists/anesthesiologists to safely administer anesthesia to infants and small children so that cleft lip and palate repair can be performed at the optimum ages for habilitation. In addition, Laotian surgeons learn the most updated techniques for cleft lip and palate repair.

Currently, most infants born in Lao PDR with cleft lip and/or palate either do not receive surgical repair or do so much later than is recommended for optimal habilitation. This is due to an insufficient number of Laotian surgeons who are trained to perform surgical repair in Lao PDR, as well as an insufficient number of anesthesiologists capable of administering anesthesia to infants and small children. Furthermore, there are few full-service surgical cleft care hospitals for the 16 provinces of Lao PDR.

The Lao Cleft Care Project in 2008 provided workshops to 21 Laotian general surgeons and surgical residents. 46 Laotian practicing anesthesiologists and anesthesia residents attended as well. During the Project in 2008, 15 cleft lip operations were performed as teaching demonstrations during the workshop.

After completion of the Lao Cleft Care Project in 2009, focusing on palate repair, Dr. Marsh hopes to continue his efforts to make cleft care in Lao PDR not merely a "surgical activity" but a "multi-disciplinary care" effort to address the many issues involved with cleft care including speech and language therapy.