By Khalida Sarwari
In 2010, a team of Saratoga Rotarians traveled to Guatemala to provide free surgeries to 115 babies and youth born with cleft lips and palates, a birth defect that affects speech, hearing and swallowing as well as appearance. The Rotary Club is hoping to repeat, if not exceed, its achievement when members return to Guatemala next spring.
The trip, scheduled for March, will be the group’s third to Guatemala, said Bruce Hodgin, trip chairman. The first one was in 2008, when the Saratoga Rotary teamed up with the local Rotary Club in Guatemala and Rotoplast, a San Francisco-based organization that organizes the missions, to provide 122 surgeries to children and youth over the course of 10 days.
With the support of Rotary Clubs throughout the country, Rotoplast organizes teams of 18 volunteer medical professionals and nine Rotary member volunteers to provide free cleft lip and palate surgeries to poor families around the world.
The 2014 mission will take place March 9-23 and will involve six to seven volunteers from Saratoga, including doctors, nurses and anesthetists. Each doctor will perform three to four surgeries per day. The oepration takes 60 to 90 minutes.
A typical day for the doctors begins at 4 a.m. and ends between 6 and 9 p.m., said Hodgin. The Rotary Club of Guatemala City advertises the surgeries in advance of the doctors’ arrival.
“By the time we arrive there’s usually 200 to 300 waiting who have traveled hundreds of miles,” Hodgin said.
Every child that waits in line is evaluated, he said. Occasionally teenagers will come, too. The oldest person to undergo surgery on the two previous trips was 16 years old.
Cleft lip and cleft palate formation is a result of malnutrition or a Vitamin C deficiency, Hodgin said. The condition is most prevalent in places where nutrition and vitamins are not common or readily available. The cost of one surgery is roughly $500, according to Hodgin.
The entire mission will cost $85,000, half of which is being covered by the Rotary District of Northern New England, which is also sending four to five Rotarians. The cost covers expenses related to renting operating rooms, hiring people in Guatemala and buying medical supplies and equipment. The volunteers pay for their own airfare and hotel, Hodgin said.
Of the remaining $42,500, Saratoga Rotary has raised more than $22,000 since October. To raise the remainder, the club is hosting a multimedia benefit concert on Oct. 5 at the Heritage Theatre in Campbell. The headlining act will be Pasquale Esposito and his band. The concert will be held from 8 to 10 p.m.
Tickets are $48 for orchestra seating and $38 for the balcony. To purchase tickets, visit the Heritage Theatre box office, 1 W. Campbell Ave., or call 408.866.2700.
Esposito, an Italian native who resides in San Jose, will also appear as the featured speaker at the noontime Saratoga Rotary meeting on Sept. 13 at the Saratoga Community Center on Allendale Avenue.
Those who are unable to attend the concert but would like to contribute to the Guatemala trip can sponsor a child with a $500 donation, said Hodgin. Donors can also request to be sent a photo of the child they sponsor.
To make a direct tax-deductible donation to support the trip, write a check to the Saratoga Rotary Charitable Foundation and mail it to P.O. Box 2244, Saratoga, CA 95070.
Rotarians to travel to Guatemala on a mission to repair cleft palates
