1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
This story takes place in Antigua, Guatemala, in a small wing of a hospital that is occupied one week a year by Faces of Hope, an organization that provides free cleft palate and functional plastic surgeries. Structural surgeries on cleft palates and cleft lips greatly increase the language abilities of children. The reconstruction of their mouths, in addition to speech therapy, makes available to them sounds which they were not able to create before. Eating is also much easier with a closed palate and lip, because otherwise, especially in young children, milk goes through the palate and out the nose.
In this wing of the hospital, both foreign doctors, and Guatemalan doctors worked together for 12 hours a day for one week straight, helping children that traveled from all over Guatemala for surgery. These operations are only available at this hospital for one week a year, and then the doctors return to their home countries and hospitals until the next year. Some of the children were there for their first surgery, some patients had been coming to this hospital for many years. The oldest patient was a 15 year old girl who had been coming every year since her birth.
Doctors assess the stitches reconstructing a patients mouth after the completion of a surgery.
A young mother carries her crying baby in the waiting room before surgery. They wait for two hours before the baby is taken in for cleft palate surgery.
Two girls carry their younger siblings in the recovery area of the hospital. Often parents send children in need of surgery with older siblings or grandparents because the parents cannot leave work.
A nurse hands a baby waking up from surgery to the mother.
A German nurse looks through the window into a surgery in process.
A nurse comforts a young boy before he is given anesthesia.
Two nurses prepare a young boy for surgery.
A surgical clamp holds a babies mouth open to clear a path to the cleft palate. Surgical tape holds the babies eyes shut to keep the corneas from drying during surgery.
A doctor creates an upper lip by slicing a bulb of skin, spreading it out, and sewing it below a young child's nose.
A baby lies in the recovery room as nurses tend to a crying child.
A nurse and a doctor prepare for the next surgery as a mother and baby wait in the next room over.