THERESA TAYLOR
NERVOUS thoughts were running through Thabile’s head before her daughter’s operation. “I kept thinking ‘what if’. But she’s strong, she didn’t even cry.”
Thabile’s 10-month-old daughter Nompumelelo was born without a soft palate and couldn’t eat properly. She was one of the 15 children who received reconstructive surgery to correct a facial deformity as part of the DAV Smile Week run by the Smile Foundation at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital this week.
Recruitment company DAV Professional Placement Group was this Smile Week’s donor.
“These moms are unbelievable. They accept (their children) as a gift from God… they don’t know they can have (their faces) fixed,” said Smile Foundation CEO Michelle Gerszt.
The Smile Foundation works with academic hospitals around the country to host Smile Weeks, during which outside donors provide money for surgery disposables and extras and surgeons focus on catching up on the backlog of facial deformity operations.
The head of the department of plastic and reconstructive surgery, Elias Ndobe, said the backlog was due to a high number of referrals to the hospital, some from outside the province. Facial deformities can leave sufferers unable to eat or speak properly. But there is also a social stigma attached to the condition.
“These children are often too afraid to leave the house, are ostracised, or are considered to be ‘devil children’. In some instances communities assume the child’s facial anomaly is due to abuse by its mother, or as a result of alcohol abuse during pregnancy,” said Gerszt. But Smile Week is not simply a time to get reconstructive operations done.
“We believe in a holistic approach,” said Gerszt. Smile employees support both the doctors and the mothers during the week. They give mothers counselling and provide for needs such as transport and food.
Smile supports hospital staff by providing skills training, bursaries and hospital infrastructure.