For the 4th year in a row, a team of medical volunteers is in the country to perform free plastic surgery procedures. It's part of a collaborative effort between the International Children's Hospital, the Friends of Pediatrics and the Ministry of Health. The team began to offer their services four years ago and on Sunday they returned. We visited the Southern Regional Hospital in Dangriga where pre-surgery screening was held for dozens of patients in need of plastic surgeries.
Dr. Alan Burke,
"There's a nice saying that to those who are given much, much is expected."
That saying and the fact that Alan Burke's mother is a Belizean is what has brought this plastic surgeon to Belize every year for the past 4 years. He is here along with 7 other medical specialists to provide facial plastic surgeries to dozens of children not ordinarily able to access this kind of care.
Dr. Alan Burke,
"We come here every year with the goal to just providing facial plastic and reconstructive services and this now being our fourth year here, we have a little following and there's all sorts of surgical follow-ups and so we are trying to keep a continuum with this service we are trying to provide. We usually see something shy of 100 people in this week and we ended up doing somewhere between fifty, sixty, seventy surgeries. We do all the facial plastic and reconstructive work. We are doing facial burns and scars, nasal trauma, congenital deformities, and various other face and neck surgeries that we can fit in between."
Fitted in that schedule is 10 year old Curtis Encalada last year the first of a 4 step procedure was done on his left ear to reconstruct it. His mother carol says it is something they simply had to do.
Carol Encalada,
"W brought Curtis to do his second part of his surgery. He was here last year and he did the first part. Dr. Burke, he was the doctor who did the plastic surgery. We are doing this to help Curtis because sometimes when he goes to school he goes through an emotional state when the children tease him. They laugh after him and he just comes home and he feels very bad about it. Sometimes he comes and cry. So we are doing this also to help him."
Dr. Alan Burke,
"Its gratifying because its not just a change in form and aesthetics but it is a change in function and so many of these kids have really been stigmatized by these deformities and they become some what reclusive and some can be shunned by society. I don't think Belize is like that, being such a welcoming type of place, but we are trying to normalize these kids."
It's quite the task, Sunday's screening clinic alone saw dozens of children and their parents come in to see how burke could help them. And while it may seem somewhat overburdening this doctor says for him it isn't. Out of the ordinary maybe but it's a welcomed change.
Dr. Alan Burke,
"We might be working a little harder than average here primarily because once we've seen people at the beginning of the week, we are then doing surgery for the rest of the week which isn't always typical. In any given work schedule there tends to be half office, half operating room. So this is primarily a surgical visit. We get a great welcome here and a change is as good as rest so it's not really all work."
Maybe not all work but for these children it may well be life altering.
The medical team will continue their work at the Southern Regional until the end of this week.
