Day one of surgeries is always exciting – finally getting to do what the mission is all about is what everyone wants. It’s like waiting all season for your team to get to the big game and now it’s game day, it’s time to perform. Rotaplast international was started on providing free cleft lip and palate plastic surgeries for children who would have no other chance at getting these life changing procedures. It’s easy to see how important and life changing the organization is when you meet the people who are effected most.
Ahmed is a seventeen month old boy with a bi lateral cleft lip and cleft palate. He has a 7 year old older brother and a twin sister who has encephalitis. Ahmed’s mother Bromi said the family traveled from the nearby town of Dokurbezar when they heard about the program through the internet. Ahmed is a little fighter, and ended up being a great candidate for the surgery. After making it through the clinic day, Ahmed sat in the waiting room waiting for his turn with his mother and older brother and twin sister constantly nearby. His older brother was all smiles and any time his little brother started to get tired and cry he would come over and try to help his mother calm him down and then give him a kiss. Ahmed’s whole family was at the hospital for the surgery, including his father mother and aunts. Ahmed’s cleft lip surgery went well, but he will still need other surgeries. This is why donations from corporations, Rotarians, and people like the readers of this blog are so important. I think of all the little things in my life I take for granted, like the ability to chew my food properly without having any problems and it makes my worst days seem pretty trivial to what little Ahmed faces minute by minute, day after day, month after month. It’s an easy problem to fix, so why not help another human being out, literally change the rest of their lives, and help them fix it? We will put Ahmeds after picture next week along with the other before and afters.
Ahmed on the morning of his surgery waiting with this sister, older bother and mother and aunt.
Watch the Rotaplast day one Livestream from Sylhet Women’s Medical College and Hospital via Voice of Sylhet.