INDIA. It’s the quiet dignity of the children and the parents that strikes you most.
Taking a tour of The Smile Train-funded cleft surgery ward at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad is a heart-wrenching, yet enriching experience. Little boys and girls, teenagers, and even some mature adults in their 30s with acute cleft problems are gathered in the ward with their families, all hanging on every word uttered by Dr Mukunda Reddy, the inspirational plastic & hand surgeon who leads the dedicated team that conducts the surgeries.
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Left to right: The Smile Train India’s Satish Kalra; Dr Mukunda Reddy, Plastic & Hand Surgeon at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences; The Moodie Report Publisher Martin Moodie |
Many have come from hundreds of miles away, from small, impoverished rural communities all over this vast nation. All have come in hope. All will leave with lives transformed.
The Moodie Report visited Nizam’s on Friday in the company of The Smile Train’s Indian representative Satish Kalra. The visit was designed to help our understanding of The Smile Train’s work in the lead-up to the “˜Turning Tears into Smiles’ charity dinner in Hong Kong on 5 October*, co-organised by The Moodie Report and Hugo Boss.
That dinner will raise crucial funds for The Smile Train, the world’s leading cleft programme, one that specialises in high-quality, accredited surgeries in developing countries, with a particular focus on children. The Smile Train has funded 82,000 surgeries in India alone over the past seven years – 82,000 lives, mostly children’s, changed beyond comprehension.
We are led on the tour by Dr Reddy, a dignified, quietly serene man, whose hands are those of an artist and whose touch is having a remarkable impact on many lives every day. “Until now we did an average of 400 surgeries a year,” he says. “This year, thanks to The Smile Train, we will do 800 clefts.”
Notes Satish Kalra: “In a traditional society like ours, the tragedy that follows a cleft birth is profound. Often the wife goes to the home of her parents to deliver the first child. If the baby is born with a cleft, more often that not mother and child are not allowed to come back.” Adds Dr Reddy: “Many children are abandoned and many husbands desert their wives.”
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(Left) Baby Shoib, one day after his operation, with his 19-year old mother and The Smile Train’s Satish Kalra; (Right) The Smile Train brings hope and smiles where before there were none | |
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(Left) Pretty in pink: Meet beautiful Babu, 9 months old and at 6 kilos just big enough for tomorrow’s operation; (Right) Yashika aged three was operated on when younger but the palate broke down. “We spent 40,000 rupees for a bad job earlier. We came here because of the quality of the surgery,” says her father. | |
Around 35,000 cleft births will occur in India this year. Thanks to The Smile Train’s funding and awareness campaigns in the community, many of those can be fixed at any of the 117 hospitals funded by the programme.
Dr Reddy says that the optimum age for surgeries is up to one and a half years. Quality surgery within that period can ensure near normal appearance and speech.
“There is no other surgical procedure that can make such a difference to a life,” says Satish. “It is simply life altering.”
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Riding The Smile Train in India – click the Podcast icon to listen To download: right click on the Podcast icon and select ‘Save Target As’ option for more information, instructions and previous Podcasts |
But in India, and many other countries around the world, that surgery would simply not happen without the work of The Smile Train, which not only funds immediate surgeries but also underwrites an “˜outreach programme’ that takes medical advisors out into communities. There they advise people of the available programmes – and in many cases help fund their visits to the hospitals.
“Many are simply not aware that the condition can be repaired,” says Dr Reddy. “That’s where our work with health workers matters. Many are afraid to get out of their own village and would not have come here without the efforts of The Smile Train.”
It is also of the highest quality. To his bitter chagrin, much of Dr Reddy’s work is spent repairing botched cleft operations, often conducted in “˜camps’ by flying squads of foreign doctors who visit the country on short, unregulated visits. They mean well, but many of these “˜flying doctor’ programmes lead to wholly unnecessary complications and further operations says Dr Reddy. “I’m totally opposed to camps,” he says. “I have a huge backload of poor operations to deal with – it’s much better to get it right first time.”
Says Satish: “We are probably the only charity programme that actually drags up the quality of surgery. Every single surgery is computer analysed and tracked. The greatest pay-off is that the kids get first-class surgery at world-class hospitals – easily as good as in the UK or US.
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(Left) Mother and baby one day after Dr Reddy’s skilled hands have worked their magic; (Right) Young Akbar, taken out of school since class 4 because fellow students started laughing at him. “Now I will put him back in school,” says his proud father, a porter who earns around 80 rupees (US$2) a day | |
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(Left) Young Anji’s gorgeous smile and big deep eyes light up the room – and The Moodie Report Publisher Martin Moodie (Right) Srivani, a nine-year old girl from the third grade, delivers Martin Moodie a bouquet of flowers. An hour later later her features will be magically transformed in the operating ward by Dr Reddy’s team | |
“A child’s life is just as valuable here as it is in the West and we have the highest safety standards – our mortality rate (in operations) is half that of the US. For us every child’s life is sacrosanct. The mother hands the child over to us and I will do everything in my power to ensure that child is handed back safely.”
Adds Dr Reddy: “We take a highly scientific approach to evaluating each case. We don’t just close the gap, because that is a bad surgery.”
| A smile that lights up Hyderabad |
| ”Anji and countless other children like him would be the forgotten ones if it were not for The Smile Train and hospitals such as Nizim’s“ |
| More on The Moodie Blog |
And so the tour of the ward begins. At the end of the room a big blue sign proclaims “˜Smile Train Centre for Facial Clefts’. Underneath is The Smile Train’s distinctive smiling train cartoon logo. By each bed, brightly coloured balloons and yellow curtains with cartoon characters light up the room, while underlining the poignancy of all children’s’ wards.
Our first meeting is with little Srikanth, a brave, brave eight-year old boy, who has had to battle a heart defect, problems with his eyes as well as a cleft lip and palate. The little lad, operated on just yesterday, sits up, cross-legged on his bed, his face bruised with stitches (outside and inside his mouth) but the cleft beautifully repaired.
“There’s an Indian saying – “˜one way of climbing a tree is to sit on an acorn’. That’s not my way of doing things“ |
It is hard not to weep but the child’s stoicism and the calm, necessarily business-like approach of Dr Reddy and his team check one’s emotions. They deal with hundreds of these cases each year. I ask him how many stitches the boy has in his face. “Normally we try not to count the stitches because we do so many,” he replies. “In this case his surgery was long delayed because of his heart problems. He’s been kept out of school until now as his grandmother decided only to send him after the operation.”
Next up is Swathi, a pretty little 12-year old girl, operated on yesterday. In this case it was a “repair” says Dr Reddy. He has a quiet word with her grandmother whose face lights up with laughter. “What did you say?” I ask. “I told her that Swathi is now very pretty and will be able to get married,” he says.
Each child and adult that we meet has a story. It’s always a sad one but now it’s ending well. There’s Jayanthi, a 25-year old who has somehow completed a microbiology degree despite a severe cleft condition that was poorly operated on when she was young. Today she sits on her bed, in pain from the recent operation and whispering to me about her career hopes. But her eyes are dancing.
Our tour is interrupted by Srivani, a nine-year old girl from the third grade who brings me and Satish a bouquet of flowers each. As we leave the hospital later that day, we see her gowned up and about to enter surgery. The innate beauty and dignity of her face, despite her condition, will stay with me forever.
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(Left) The heart of an angel, the hands of an artist: Dr Mukunda Reddy with one of his many grateful patients; (Right) Nurses, relatives and young patients Anji (smiling as always) and Mounica gather to say farewell; | |
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Martin Moodie and Dr Reddy with two mothers and their brave daughters, about to undergo cleft surgery; (Right) Dedication personified: Dr Reddy, Satish Kalrar and the Nizam’s team | |
I meet so many brave individuals whose lives and those of their families have been ravaged by clefts. Laxmi Narasimha, aged nine, Shoib 19, little nine-month old Bhoomik, Ramanama aged 15 and cheeky wee Anji, aged six, who will be operated on the next day. He has huge brown eyes and a smile that lights up half of Hyderabad when I tell him he is going to one day play cricket for India (I think with his cheeky daring he just might).
These children will all grow up with normal faces, normal lives and hope restored. That’s why Dr Reddy is so keen to reach the young. He introduces me to Ankamma, a 35 year woman with a major palatal and lip deformity that has her teeth protruding up by her nose. She’s a single mother (widowed) of a 12-year old child, who lives an hour and a half from Chennai and who has spent her whole life believing she had an irreparable condition.
I tell Dr Reddy that her case looks very difficult from an operating point of view. “No,” he replies. “The unoperated cases will be much less difficult for us.”
“I will never forget him. Whatever I earn I will dedicate to him and The Smile Train“ |
We say our goodbyes and the nurses and staff line up to say their farewells as we capture a photo of the moment. The reverence towards Dr Reddy is immense and I feel in awe of this gentle man with the curing hands.
We adjourn to an office where Dr Reddy’s team computer analyse all cases, pre and post-operation. There we take tea and coffee with some of the patients and parents and we learn of lives transformed.
We meet Mr N Subramarfam, a tall, moustachioed and bearded fellow who looks like a pirate extra from a film set. And that is exactly where he’s headed – some 25 years after the first of many operations. The young man has found a career in the film industry and is bound for Hollywood. “They want me to play a villain,” he says to laughter.
He’s an unlikely villain but to him Dr Reddy is a confirmed hero. “I will never forget him. Whatever I earn I will dedicate to him and The Smile Train.”
Outside the hospital it is time to bid farewell to Dr Reddy and Satish. It’s an emotional moment and one that makes me determined that the Hong Kong dinner will be a huge success.
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“You’re the first donor to come and visit us in India so we’re so happy about your visit,” Satish tells me. “Tell everyone that there is no divine cause that is causing this condition, it is an entirely curable defect.”
I ask Satish if he gets angry sometimes, both about the random injustice of the condition itself and of the struggle for funding. “Of course,” he smiles. “I’m very impatient. I don’t like things going slowly. There’s an Indian saying – “˜one way of climbing a tree is to sit on an acorn’. That’s not my way of doing things.”
Is there an end game? Yes, replies Satish. “When no child is crossing the age of three months without receiving their first treatment then a country is considered “˜cleft free’. When that happens my work will be done.”
As my car takes me away into the choking Hyderabad traffic I turn around and watch Dr Reddy shake hands with Satish and then walk slowly back towards the hospital. He has work to finish.
HELPING THE SMILE TRAIN
How can you help? By booking seats or full tables at the 5 October charity dinner themed ‘Turning Tears into Smiles’ (HK$2,000 a seat or HK$20,000 a table) or by pledging donations via e-mail to Martin Moodie at Martin@TheMoodieReport.com or Nadine Heubel at Nadine_Heubel@hugoboss.com. The venue is the Regal Hotel, Hong Kong, which is also offering preferential booking rates for overseas guests.
Pledges can be made at all levels to suit company and individual budgets.
The organisers desperately need a limited number of very high value items to assist fund-raising in the live and silent auctions that will take place on the evening.
For more information on The Smile Train please visit www.smiletrain.org
MORE STORIES ON THE SMILE TRAIN
DFS, King Power, Bacardi climb aboard The Smile Train; first Chinese patient to attend – 06/07/07
Jonathan Holland, Revlon’s Art Miller and Alpha’s Rod Wiltshire ride The Smile Train – 28/06/07
The Smile Train charity dinner picks up pace as ISG Hong Kong leaps onboard – 21/06/07
Patrón Tequila raises US$50,000 at charity golf tournament for The Smile Train- 17/06/07
