News

Post date: January 01, 2023

Title: The Gift of a Smile

Teaser:

Leann had always celebrated Christmas but had never thought of it as a time of gifts and presents. In fact, Leann and her family were too poor to exchange any Christmas gifts at all. Christmas time, 2018, was especially hard for Leann. She, ten months previously, had given birth to a daughter, Aerose, who had a severe facial deformity, a cleft lip and palate. Ever since that day Leann had grieved for her daughter’s future. She envisioned teasing, ridicule, rejection and loneliness. But then in late November, 2018, Leann heard about an American cleft team coming to her region.

Post date: January 01, 2023

Title: Message from the President

Teaser:

When Mothers Pray

When Melanie gave birth last June in her town of Kalamansat, Philippines, her initial joy quickly turned to devastation. Her newborn daughter whom she had come to love prior to birth, had a large cleft of the lip.

Post date: January 01, 2023

Title: ICSF Resumes Full Mission Schedule After Pandemic

Teaser:

As of the printing of this newsletter, ICSF will have served a total of seven surgical missions for the year 2022 with six already scheduled for the year 2023. “Being able to schedule missions at this rate and frequency is made possible by our donors,” states Doctor Williams. “We really owe it all to them.” “In 2023 we anticipate ten missions served which is up to speed for what we were accomplishing prior to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he added.

Post date: January 02, 2022

Title: ICSF Serves First Cleft Palate Mission by Any US Organization Since Start of Covid-19

Teaser:

While much of the world is still in lockdown due to Covid-19, ICSF led the way for the rest of the American surgical organizations by sending out the first surgical team since the start of Covid-19.

Post date: January 02, 2022

Title: Trans-equatorial Jessica Crosses Equator Again for Surgery by ICSF

Teaser:

In 2019 a non-surgical humanitarian team from the United States encountered an eighteen month-old girl in Ecuador named Jessica, born with a complete bilateral (two sided) cleft of her lip and palate. At first, the team didn’t know where to turn for help. That’s when Cheryl Dean, a member of the humanitarian team, decided to search the internet and find a team who had a reputation for doing careful surgery for children with clefts. She landed on ICSF’s website and after reading about ICSF’s values and goals decided to make the call.

Post date: January 02, 2022

Title: The Gift of a Smile

Teaser:

Zea was too young to know she had a serious birth defect. Her mother and father knew though. Zea’s defect was a bilateral cleft lip, a defect which is more serious than most because it involved a cleft on both sides of the lip. This type of cleft is known for being very difficult to treat—typically with poor results. Zea’s parents grieved, even though they knew they could get free surgery. They had seen the results of some of these surgeries on other children in the area, performed by various medical groups, and none looked even close to normal.

Post date: January 02, 2022

Title: Message from the President

Teaser:

Who really cares?

I frequently read websites and ads from other overseas mission organizations. One claim is common to all. They all say, “our surgeries are life-changing,” or even “life saving.”

Post date: June 06, 2020

Title: ICSF’s First Mother

Teaser:

As the saying goes, you never know the value of what you have until you lose it. I came to believe this ever so poignantly when I was, without warning, notified of my mother’s unexpected death in July of 2016, while I was away on a cleft palate mission in Pakistan.

Post date: June 06, 2020

Title: ICSF Logs Three Cleft Missions to the Philippines prior to Covid-19

Teaser:

The Philippines, a country with a huge demand for ICSF’s cleft palate services, was the recipient of three missions, January through March in 2020’s first quarter.

Post date: June 06, 2020

Title: Message from the President

Teaser:

A Mother’s Last Journey

The ICSF surgical team, after completing a long day of surgeries, had left the OR to check our pre- and post-operative patients in the hospital ward. We had barely entered the ward when an unusual sight caught my eye at my immediate left.