Maria Jose Tager did not know if what she was looking for existed. As the head of International Relations for the Pediatric Foundation of Guatemala, she wanted to find a volunteer organization that would come to Guatemala and not just perform free surgery but do so with great care and precision — and take care of the patients as they healed after surgery.
Early after ICSF began serving in the Philippines in 2006, Dr. Williams and his American colleagues began recruiting and training Filipino health professionals.
Jenilyn did not want her baby, Xyrene, to be a number. Xyrene had been born with a complete cleft lip and palate and needed surgery—but not by just anyone, concluded the young mother.
Congenital Amniotic Band Syndrome of the face is a very rare condition, occurring in less than one out of 500,000 live births. But figures didn’t mean anything to Shelon’s mother and father. Their son was born with a horrible deformity, and they were devastated.
Bolivia was one of the first countries served by the newly-created ICSF in early 2006. Eighteen Bolivian missions later, Dr. Williams recounts, “LaPaz is so high in elevation that I have always had a little trouble sleeping at nights due to the lower oxygen levels.
“You can’t change the world,” said my doctor friend in 2004, after I told him of my plans to leave all medical practice in the U.S. for the developing world. My friend had uttered these words in an effort to convince me that giving up my plastic surgery career in the U.S. would not be in my best interest.
Jonathan Almencion was four years old when his mother first brought him to have his cleft palate treated at ICSF’s Cadiz, Philippines, cleft palate mission in 2011.
Why does ICSF do all of its own fundraising and not use professional fundraisers? When I first initiated ICSF in 2005 and was looking for money to fund our cleft palate missions, someone suggested using professional fundraisers.
It was late March 1998 when Dr. Geoff Williams was invited by a team of his Taiwanese mentors to join them in a free cleft palate mission to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
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