ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601240051
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: THAI NGUYEN, VIETNAM
SOURCE: RICHARD HERZFELDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
OPERATION SMILE fixes minor facial deformities all over the world. But the doctors say so much more could be done.
Duong Dinh Huong had just one wish before going into the operating room.
``Please tell the doctor to do a good job,'' the shy teen-ager told his Vietnamese-American nurse, Be Ho. ``I would love to have handsome lips.''
Duong spent the first 14 years of his life with his upper lip disfigured by a harelip and his speech impaired by a cleft palate. His parents were rice farmers from the San Tri ethnic minority, among the poorest people in Vietnam.
``Even if we worked hard, sometimes we didn't have enough to eat,'' said Duong's father, Duong Van Cao. ``We couldn't afford anything. We didn't think we would ever be able to help him.''
That's where U.S.-based Operation Smile came in. In just 90 minutes, a team of visiting American surgeons repaired Duong's deformities - a routine operation in the industrial world but one that passes for nothing less than a miracle in a poor province in one of the poorest countries in Asia.
``We're an organization that says miracles still do occur. They just occur through the gifts that we've been fortunate enough to be given,'' said Dr. Bill Magee, a plastic surgeon who founded Operation Smile in Norfolk, Va.
Magee and his wife, Kathy, started ``Op Smile'' after a trip to the Philippines in 1982. Planning to do about 25 operations and get in a little touring, they were stunned when hundreds of disfigured people appeared seeking help. Many of them were unknown to local health authorities. Some of the adults had spent their whole lives hidden in shame.
Op Smile has grown into a $4 million-a-year project financed by grants and corporate donations. In 1995, its surgical teams visited 12 countries, from Russia to Nicaragua. It first came to Vietnam in 1989 at the request of Gen. John Vessey, who was guiding U.S.-Vietnam policy under President Bush.
Vessey, a member of Op Smile's Minneapolis chapter, thought a purely humanitarian mission would improve the bitter atmosphere that had dominated U.S.-Vietnam relations since the Vietnam War.
``You are healing wounds in children's lips while healing the wounds between our two peoples,'' Health Minister Do Nguyen Phuong told Magee this past fall, noting the two countries normalized relations in August. ``You came to our country healing the wounds of war.''
In the latest visit, Operation Smile brought teams of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and speech therapists to Da Nang, a port in central Vietnam, and Thai Nguyen, the gritty capital of Bac Thai province 50 miles north of Hanoi.
In two weeks the teams treated more than 200 patients, removing scar tissue from burns as well as repairing cleft lips and palates. But, Magee said, ``It's just a drop in the bucket.''
Doctors estimate that 4,000 babies are born with cleft lips, palates or both every year in Vietnam, and few are treated.
Vietnamese doctors lack equipment, training and exposure to the latest techniques. The government focuses on fundamental public health problems like malnutrition, sanitation, rickets, polio and malaria.
``The idea is not just to sew up somebody's lips and have people say, `Gee, they did a nice job on your harelip,''' said Dr. Mike Freedland, a surgeon from Detroit. ``The idea is to do such a good job that people say, `What is that scar on your lip?'''
Donations can be made to Operation Smile headquarters at 717 Boush St., Norfolk, Va. 23510. Telephone (804)625-0375.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Duong Dinh Huong is readied for cleft lip and palateby CNBsurgery in November in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. color.