Patient Stories

Mirna traveled for 15 hours to get to the Operation Smile medical mission in Estelí, Nicaragua today. She walked an hour and took five different buses. Along the way, she…

Felista did everything she thought she should do during her pregnancy: She ate well and received full prenatal care. She and her husband, Steve, were already the proud parents of a…

When Elisa was born, her parents, Sidonie and Jean, were overcome by sadness – their daughter had been born with a cleft lip and cleft palate, and they believed this…

While Ghana offers some of Africa’s most beautiful landscapes, it also suffers from a lack of adequate infrastructure, health care services and economic opportunities, resulting in some of the world’s…

Her name means “solution.” The moment Meheftehe was born, she was in desperate need of just that. Meheftehe suffered from a severe facial cleft which extended from her right eye…

As Senaida sat next to her son Virgilio, she couldn’t help but smile widely when she looked at him. Since 21-year-old Virgilio’s severe bilateral cleft lip was repaired during Operation…

Energetic and talkative, Bui loved preschool. As he bounced around the playground in his rural Vietnamese community, the 3-year-old paid no mind to his cleft lip while playing ball games…

Shocked and heartbroken when her baby Valeska was born with a cleft lip, Zorida received more discouraging news within the first moments of her daughter’s life. No sooner than learning…