We had a great year in 2017, over 80 children received surgery which is more than we have ever carried out in a year. In our last update we told you about a young boy called Novel, he had one of the most complex clefts we had ever come across and his operation failed 4 times over the space of 7 years. In 2017 we were given the chance to take him to Taiwan which has one of the most sophisticated cleft centers in the world. We are glad to share the news with you that at last Novel has had an extremely successful operation which was carried out in July last year. He is still coming to the centre every week for speech therapy but already his life has been totally transformed.
We carried out operations with our new American partner last year called The McGann Ratner foundation, we were able to carry out operations for bone grafts which were a first for our charity. There team just returned in May this year and more bone graft operations were carried out.
In October and November last year we had our usual teams of Dutch surgeons from Holland come over to Siantar where we work with our partnership charity Harapan Jaya. We had a great team surgeons who carried out over 70 cleft operations for our charity with the most amazing results.
Once again we would like to thank Adventure Aid for their recent visit to Indonesia January 2018. A group of 15 English people came over to see our work first hand and meet the children of whom they personally changed the lives of. The group brought many gifts with them that they shared with the children putting big smiles on so many faces. Adventure Aid changed the lives of 20 children last year and this year they plan to do the same. If you are interested in getting involved another trip is being organised for January 2019, if you want to learn more about these trips please visit their website at www.adventureaid.org.uk
