Staff make annual trip for cleft palate surgeries

Consultant anaesthetist Dr Rachel Montgomery (right) lead the charity trip, which included five staff members from the University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust

Anaesthetists have reflected on the "huge difference" that their annual charity trip has been making to children in the Philippines born with a cleft lip or palate.

Staff from the University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust (UHS) in Hampshire, volunteered to help provide life-changing surgeries for children with the birth defect in Manila.

The trips are in support of Australian surgical charity Operation Restore Hope.

Consultant anaesthetist Dr Rachel Montgomery, who led the team, said that without the surgeries "children can face social exclusion".

Dr Montgomery said that the surgeries made "a huge difference", due to the proportion of Filipino children with cleft palates

She became involved with the charity in 2018 while on a fellowship in Australia, and since then has brought more colleagues on board.

The trip became an annual event, which the medical staff do in their own time.

This year's group included five colleagues from Southampton, two of whom are Filipino nurses.

For a week in April, they performed surgeries on cleft palates on children aged six months to teenagers, as well as on some adults.

Dr Montgomery said it made "a huge difference", due to the proportion of Filipino children with cleft palates.

"It's very important that we don't cut any corners and don't put any children at risk," she said, adding that investigations had been done to make sure the surgeries were safe.

“Without the surgery, these children can face social exclusion and struggle with their speech, and even their nutrition in some cases where it’s their palate."

She said it highlighted what they could achieve, "even with limited resources".

"It’s not like back home where we have everything as we’d want it to be, with plenty of back-up," Dr Montgomery said.

But she felt it was all worth it to see "those precious smiles on the faces of both the children and their parents".

Last year, they treated 42 patients who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

Dr Montgomery said citizens had expressed gratitude and the mayor had taken the team out for dinner.

Ms Montgomery said the birth defect affected the children's speech, nutrition and even social life

Christine Espina, originally from Cebu, is one of the UHS anaesthetic nurses who was invited to join the charity trip in February 2023.

She said she had been "eager" to use the skills she had learned to help fellow Filipinos.

"It was a challenge for the anaesthetic team because although the local nurses were genuinely keen to lend a hand, they were not trained in anaesthetics," she said.

"As soon as we were there, we were able to create an efficient working system and everything just flowed."

Anaesthetic nurse Christine Espina (right) said she had been "eager" to use her skills to help fellow Filipinos

Ms Espina said she would "absolutely love to go again".

"I know for a fact that [Dr Montgomery] worked hard to make sure we acquired the best equipment and supplies we could possibly use, and her efforts paid off because the patients were safely anaesthetised and all surgeries were brilliantly done during the event," she added.

A spokesperson for Operation Restore Hope said: "Our focus is primarily surgical intervention for children, but we see cases present every year where adults have lived their lives without treatment and where possible we also include them in the treatment program."

The charity has been performing free surgeries for Filipinos in need since 1993.

The spokesperson said the doctors and nurses were "the real heroes" without whom "these people who need this important medical treatment would have nowhere to turn".

The annual trip is in support of surgical charity Operation Restore Hope