Lao Voices

Bridge the Gap is “group of surgeons from the Netherlands who operate as many patients with a cleft palate as they can while training Vietnamese and Lao surgeons and dentists.” In January 2008, the team traveled to Laos for the third year in a row to perform medical treatments for people with face deformities at Mahosot Hospital in Vientiane. Below is a news coverage from the Vientiane Times Newspaper.

Lao, Dutch surgeons put smiles on patients’ faces

Surgeons at Mahosot Hospital have joined a team of doctors from the Netherlands’ Bridge the Gap Foundation to provide free surgery for people with noma and cleft lips and palates.

Deputy Head of the General Surgery Ward, Dr Keutmy Khansoulivong, said yesterday poor people with this condition were almost always unable to have surgery unless there was someone willing to help them for free.

Normally the cost of surgery and transport averages US$80 per person. “This price is just too high for many people,” he said.

The operations will take place from January 7 to 21, aiming to help about 100 people.

Dr Keutmy said this was the third time the Dutch surgery team had come to help people with facial deformities at Mahosot.

He said the situation was different this time because the team would be treating noma patients as well as those with cleft lips and palates. This would mean they would not have to seek treatment overseas, as had been the case before.

“The surgeons will spend more time helping those with noma,” he said.

Dr Keutmy said that over the years several people with noma had been identified each year but doctors couldn’t help them because there were no specialists available to accompany them on trips for surgery overseas.

During the two weeks of surgery, 13 doctors and anaesthetists from Mahosot and the University of Health Science will work alongside eight doctors from the Netherlands.

Most people with noma come from poor families in remote areas who lack clean water, live unhygienically and do not regularly clean their teeth and mouths.

A survey conducted by the hospital on cleft lips found that about 200 people were born with the deformity each year in Laos, but only around 50 of these were operated on.

A resident of Phonsy village in Pakkading district, Borikhamxay province, Mrs Kham, said she took her three-month old son to Mahosot for cleft lip treatment after she heard news of the surgery in a radio announcement. Doctors told her that her son would receive treatment on Friday this week.

The Netherlands’ Bridge the Gap Foundation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to assist the Mahosot Hospital cleft-lip team in its work from 2006 until 2009. The Dutch team has agreed to donate US$10,000 per year to help run the project at Mahosot.

Mahosot Hospital first began treating cleft lip and palate patients in 1991. Since then various overseas medical organisations have collaborated with the hospital.

By XAYXANA LEUKAI
January 8, 2007
Vientiane Times