Operation of Hope at work

Herald Reporter
Doctors from Canada and the United States have reported an overwhelming public response to their offer of corrective cleft lip surgery for children. The free operations started at Harare Children’s Hospital on Monday. Operation of Hope president Ms Jennifer Trubenbach told The Herald that some children had to be turned away because of limited equipment and resources.

“We are only going to assist at least 50 children because of limited resources.
“Unfortunately we are not able to perform surgery on more children because of limited space since we can only do at least eight patients per day.

“We have a week in Zimbabwe which is not enough to help more children with this medical condition but we will be back next year for more operations,” she said.
Ms Trubenbach said there was need to train more local specialists in corrective cleft lip surgery to enable the country to improve the treatment and care of children with the condition.

“We need to train local surgeons that can help children with this condition because we are seeing that there are more children that need attention in that area,” she said.