THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140290
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
For Dr. Meshaach Ong'uti, the African bush hospital was a prescription for frustration.
The hospital in Kisumu, Kenya, had 20 beds for a region of 10 million people. Until the late 1980s, it had no operating room.
In such a place, the surgeon had no hope of helping 21-year-old Peter Owiti, whose jaw had been fused shut since a childhood injury at the age of 3 or 4. Even if they traveled to Ong'uti's home hospital in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, the diagnostic equipment was not available to correct such a deformity.
On Monday, things changed. Ong'uti was at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, studying the advanced surgical techniques used by Operation Smile to repair facial deformities. His young patient, Owiti, was lying on the table ready - more than ready - for the operation that would unlock his jaw.
Watching were 32 doctors from 12 countries, all training to do such surgeries in their home countries. As physicians affiliated with the Norfolk-based medical charity Operation Smile, they will repair some head and facial deformities for free.
``Because of the training we have through Operation Smile, we are now able to apply those techniques,'' Ong'uti said. ``All of us learn. The techniques have helped to raise the standards in Kenya.''
Ong'uti had his first contact with Operation Smile in 1986, when the charity sent a team of doctors to his country to identify and operate on people, mostly children, with facial and head deformities. Ong'uti was impressed with their skill, their ability to do what he could not, and their answer when he asked them to return: Yes, we will come.
The Kenyan doctor was awestruck by the scope of the medical missions. ``You find you've done 300 patients in one week,'' Ong'uti explained. ``We don't do 300 patients in one year.
``I found I was getting more involved because I was getting more satisfaction in terms of helping these children,'' he said.
Since then, Ong'uti has worked with Operation Smile missions in Nicaragua, the Middle East and his own country. The training, he said, improves many lives, including his own.
Ong'uti estimated that Kenya, with nearly 30 million people, has at least 25,000 children with untreated cleft palates. Cleft palates are splits in the lip and roof of the mouth.
``Here, they repair clefts at a couple days old,'' he said. ``The earliest age we do is six months for the lip and 1 1/2 years for the palate, because of the backlog.''
Owiti's case was unique. Since age 3 or 4, he had been unable to open his mouth completely, hindering his ability to speak or eat. His lower jaw was too far back and the joint was fused to his skull. He had been unable to sleep for more than two minutes at a stretch because his tongue would fall back and block his throat, causing him to gag and wake up. Because of the sleep deprivation, he fell asleep whenever and wherever he sat down.
Owiti's parents are dead, and he lives in a village with his grandmother, tending the family's two cattle, three goats and two sheep.
``He had tried to go to a lot of hospitals, but no hope was there,'' Ong'uti said. ``But one of the things I've seen with patients is that they don't give up. I think it's us surgeons who give up. Patients, even if they know they're going to die tomorrow, they never give up. This gives us a challenge to never give up, either.''
On Monday, Ong'uti and the other physicians watched as Dr. William Magee, co-founder of Operation Smile, cracked the fused jaw, moved it into place, took bone from the skull to rebuild the jaw and rearranged muscles.
Later this week, Ong'uti will return to Kenya to apply his new training to other patients and to help plan Operation Smile's next mission to Kenya, set for this fall.
``I tell you, it's changed a lot of lives,'' he said. ``Operation Smile has trained me quite well. We have to help our own people rather than have others come to help us.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Dr. Meshaach Ong'uti, a Kenyan surgeon, center, is being taught new
techniques Monday by doctors from the Norfolk-based medical charity
Operation Smile.
Photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
After 18 years of discomfort, Peter Owiti of Kenya had his jaw
surgically corrected Monday by Operation Smile doctors at Children's
Hospital of The King's Daughters.
KEYWORDS: OPERATION SMILE by CNB