"SOMETHING WORTHWHILE" Heart transplantation now in its 40th year
By Charlotte Plantive, Agence France-Presse
JOHANNESBURG Forty years ago, in the middle of the night at a Cape Town hospital, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard rewrote medical history when he carried out the first ever heart transplant. The operation captivated the imagination of the world, catapulting Barnard and South Africa onto the world stage and leading to hundreds of similar operations around the globe. Dene Friedman, who was in the theatre during the groundbreaking operation, assisting with the running of the heart-lung machine, remembers the surgery "as if it were yesterday." "Nobody took a photograph, nobody did anything.... We didn't think of the publicity side of it," she said. Barnard had not even told the hospital that he would be attempting the operation, giving little thought to the reaction his techniques would generate. "Professor Barnard told them in the early hours of the next morning. He just gave a phone call," remembers Friedman. "We just thought that we were doing something worthwhile for the patient," she said of Louis Washkansky, a 53-year-old diabetic with incurable heart disease who had suffered three heart attacks. Barnard had already practiced the basic surgical technique for the transplant-that was pioneered by other surgeons on animals-in the laboratory. He only needed one donor to put this knowledge into practice. On the night of the December 2, 1967, a 25-year-old woman was fatally injured in a car accident. Her blood type matched that of Washkansky's and her father agreed that her heart could be donated for the surgery. "We entered the theatre in the middle of the night and left at 8 A.M. the next morning," said Friedman. "It was very impressive, exciting, and scary. As it had never been done before, we weren't sure about the effects in a human patient." The 30-strong medical team looked on in rapture as the transplanted heart gave its first few beats, making medical history. However, Washkansky died 18 days later after developing double pneumonia as a result of the immunosuppressive drugs he was taking. "It was terrible. When Washkansky died, I was totally disappointed," said Friedman, who has since gone into private practice. Barnard subsequently became the target of much criticism for rushing into the operation when so little was still known about immunosuppression. However the naysayers did not prevent the operation from making history, and opening the way to some 100 heart-transplant attempts in the following year. "On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned," Barnard recalled later. His bright smile, good looks, and charm also contributed to Barnard's fame, and the son of a poor Afrikaner preacher was often seen at the side of actresses like Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. He married three times, the last time in 1988 to 18-year-old model Karin Setzkorn whom he also subsequently divorced. "Professor Barnard was very dynamic ... a very exciting person to work for, very challenging," remembers Friedman who worked with him until Barnard's retirement in 1983 due to problems with rheumatoid arthritis. Until then Barnard continued transplanting hearts and pioneering other techniques such as "piggyback" transplanting, putting a second heart into a patient while leaving the first in place. He also became the first to carry out a heart-lung transplant. Not one to conform, Barnard admitted he had often practiced passive euthanasia and regularly clashed with South Africa's government over apartheid issues. "He never thought that he would captivate the imagination of the public and the whole world. He didn't think so at all," said his former colleague. Barnard died in 2001 while on holiday in Cyprus, at the age of 78 from an asthma attack. M
PARIS Elephants on LSD ... sexual turn-ons for turkeys ... attempts to restore corpses to life: all feature on the list of the "craziest scientific expe-riments of all time," New Scientist reports. Here is a selection from the top ten, appearing in a recent issue of the British science magazine:
In 1962 US researchers, curious about what might happen to an elephant injected with LSD, fired into a tusker a syringe-full of the drug, about 3,000 times the maximum dose for a human being. The elephant trumpeted violently, keeled over and died within an hour, despite attempts to revive it with antipsychotic drugs. "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD," the researchers sheepishly concluded, in a paper published by Science.
Seeking to restore life to the deceased, Robert Cornish, a University of California scientist in the 1930s, seesawed corpses bodies up and down to circulate the blood while injecting adrenalin and anticoagulants. Forced off the campus for his controversial experiments, Cornish continued at home, building a lab that included a heart-lung machine built out of a vacuum cleaner and radiator tubing. Thomas McMonigle, a prisoner in death row, volunteered to be Cornish's guinea pig, but was turned down by the State of California, which worried that if McMonigle came back to life, he would have to be freed.
In 1960, University of Edinburgh sleep researcher Ian Oswald wondered if it was possible to sleep with one's eyes open. He got volunteers to lie down on a couch, taped their eyes open, placed a bank of flashing lights in front of them, attached electrodes to their legs to deliver painful shocks and blasted loud music into their ears. Three plucky volunteers signed up for the experiment. Despite all the impediments to sleeping, an electro-encephalogram (EEG) monitor of their brain showed all fell asleep within 12 minutes.
Pennsylvania State University's Martin Schein and Edgar Hale discovered that male turkeys, when placed in a room with a lifelike model of a female turkey, mated with the surrogate as eagerly as they would the real thing. Schein and Hale experimented to see what was the minimum sexual stimulus, gradually removing parts from the model one by one until the male bird finally lost interest. "Tail, feet and wings-Schein and Hale removed them all, but still the clueless bird waddled up to the model, let out an amorous gobble and tried to do his thing," says writer Alex Boese for New Scientist. "Finally, only a head on a stick remained. The male turkey was still keen. In fact, it preferred a head on a stick to a headless body." M AFP
Dong de los Reyes, Contributing Editor Jena Fetalino, Publication Manager
Showbiz scuttlebutt has it that a sexy star recently paid a tidy sum for the enlargement of her elevator button of sorts-the so-called la bella loca or G spot. It was an earnest bid to make such luscious spot more accessible during sex. The nonsurgery involves injection of a specially prepared collagen into the bean-sized Grafenberg spot just behind the pubic bone. It's smack on the upper anterior wall two inches off the adit to the silken depths. The collagen filler swells the spot to the size of a peso coin. That's for easier and greater area of penile traction. The 15-minute procedure costs about PhP50,000-a year's average yield of profits off a hectare of palay. Chicken feed to folks that come with high incomes. A patient need not be impatient-she can indulge a day after the collagen injection. With such an enhanced spot, some patients report going through the paroxysms of an orgasm just crossing their legs. However, the collagen is absorbed into the body in four to six months. The inner oasis of multiple orgasms reverts to its one-centimeter pea size. Not unlike sex, a satisfied patient may desire to go through repeat surgeries coming up with a neat sum every four to six months and will likely keep coming back for more. So much issue about puffing up a bit of tissue. Yet, American College of Gynecolo-gists and Obstetricians fellow and American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology diplo-mate Dr. Bernabe Marinduque, who has performed such augmentation on hundreds of women, states that a shot on the G spot could change sex lives and nudge out repressed inhibitions. However, he cautions that the enhancement, which was being done since 1996, "works only in 87 percent of women. [The remaining] 13 percent, I don't know exactly what the effect is." In preliminary studies carried out at the Los Angeles-based Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute, he cites that seven percent of G-shot women report enhanced sexual arousal, enhanced sexual gratification, and heightened sexual desire. "Some of them actually report that they're also having good sex after having the shot given to them," he adds. For the proper patient with the proper motivation (read: daring and willing), Marinduque can perform a G shot that lasts for keeps. "It's very simple. It's the same way as doing the collagen except that instead of collagen, you'll be injecting autologous fat from the patient. And so you permanently enlarge the G spot," he avers. Vaginal-repair-surgery pioneer Dr. David Matlock hasn't tried it yet but the process has been done in South Korea by Marinduque's peers in laser vaginal rejuvenation. "I had some Korean classmates during my training," Marinduque relates. "They were telling me that they were doing this, injecting autologous fat in the G spot. If a woman comes in for a liposuction and she wants to have the G spot enhanced, harvest the fat from lipo-suction-inject some on the G spot." While G-spot enhancement with collagen has become standard praxis, the autologous fat injection has yet to be given the Food and Drug Administration go-ahead. There are consequent risks though: "Infection, fat embolism can happen. Those things can happen. Fat embolism can happen because you'll be injecting into a perivascular space. That's one aspect you have to be worried about." And the FDA-approved collagen enhancement procedure isn't exactly risk-free, he implies. "Infection is one complication that you get into. It's very rare actually. Another thing is bleeding from the site you put the injection in," he cites.
One odd complication was attested by a patient in her (no pun intended), blogspot. She felt always on the verge of an orgasm and in one instance while engaged in a chit-chat, she crossed her legs and had an orgasm. Also, there was a satisfied celebrity customer who phoned from the Netherlands to confess that she had been faking orgasms all the time but got a blast of the 24-karat true-blue mind-blowing climax. She was screaming a confession on the phone, "It was the most fantastic jolt that ever happened to me!" The special collagen inject kit still comes from Los Angeles in the US mainland, the material developed by G-shot pioneer Matlock and comes with a confidentiality obligation not to divulge its secrets for the sprinkling of G-shot practitioners the world over. "Eventually I'll be looking for other fillers that's less expensive than PhP50,000 a pop," Marinduque confesses. The likely G shot customers range from ages 18 to 55-from the young to the middle aged, "women who are sexually attuned to themselves, they know what they want." Even menopausal women, they haven't paused actually: "They're sexually active more than you think. So you should not ignore them. So it really depends on the motivation, it really depends on their health. It really depends on their desire." And he has his sights firm on the women, not to males who have second thoughts about their partners faking orgasms and want them to have the real thing. "I really want to market it to women, not to men. I believe strongly that women should take hold of their sexuality." Couples and lovers have been exploring each other's bodies, probing with tongue tips and fingertips for erogenous zones for ages. By some stroke of irony, it was German-born ophthalmologist Ernst Grafenberg who described female ejaculation and the pleasurable erotic zone on the vaginal wall. It took three decades before the Grafen-berg finding was validated. In a 1981 presentation in a New York convention of sexologists, Dr. John Perry and Dr. Beverly Whipple bared their finding the spot in all the women they probed-and they named the wee erotic Eden after Grafenberg. Sure tops having a name tabbed after an ailment, an impairment or disease. Linger a finger on this trigger and the pressure yields pleasure-the spot swells and wells out orgasm, "it can even bring about multiple orgasms," cites Marinduque. Neither Grafenberg nor the Perry-Whipple tandem was the first to have put their fingers on the oasis of orgasms. He points to cultural evidence: "Panamanian women, they call it la bella loca. They know the spot that gives them exquisite, exquisite sensation from stimulation of the anterior wall of the vagina, exactly where the G spot is. "Among Middle Eastern women, men are taught to stimulate a particular part in the women. Maski 'di nila nakikita 'yan, maski nagse-sex silang nakatalukbong, they are taught to stimulate that certain part of the vagina that can pleasure the women." For couples of modest means who cannot afford taking a PhP50,000 shot, there's always the reliably old-fashioned digital technology-a firm finger on the trigger two inches into her silk portal, just smack on the upper anterior wall to cause temblor after delicious temblor to come. Or get into a posteriori canine coitus, "that's the doggy style as we call it or if the woman is seated on the man. It has nothing to do with the angulation of the penis. There's anthropological reason to that. Do you know of any mammal below human beings that have sexual intercourse in the missionary position?" he notes. "Can you believe that it's the girth of the penis that's important, not the length?" he states with nary a blink nor a wink. M
Dong de los Reyes, Contributing Editor
At an average PhP36 per capita spending on food each day as reckoned by local dietary experts, the head of a family with a brood of 21 children has to shell out PhP792-PhP5,544 a week or PhP22,176 a month. Such a sum excludes from meals the mother who bore such a huge brood. The children's education from grade school up to completion of a four-year college course entails coughing up-based on benchmark prices prevailing in 1978-PhP1.2 million per child, or PhP25.2 million. The man who has fathered those 21 children is reportedly declared a champion and role model for the millions of Manileños living in squalor. If he'd been a woman, he wouldn't be a hero-he'd probably not even be alive, enduring pregnancy year after year, for a total of 16 years. It didn't help that former Manila mayor Jose Atienza Jr. took kindly and acted consentidor to such feats of fecundity, sometimes doling out PhP1,000 for each family with five or more children dwelling in the city's dirt-poor settlements. Aside from token dole-outs, Atienza also started pulling out "all of the modern contraceptive methods from barangay health stations" starting in 2000, said the former executive director of a women's health clinic in Baseco, a depressed compound attached to the seawall of Manila port and home to about 65,000 residents. In February 2000, a well-intentioned Atienza issued Executive Order No. 003 to push for so-called "natural family planning" to promote a culture of life in favor of artificial contraceptive methods. For seven years, the Atienza order held sway over the city in keeping with the President's adherence to "population and reproductive-health approaches that respect our culture and values." EO no. 003 affected more than 470,000 women of reproductive age in the city, which as it was already ranked as having one of the highest population densities in the world. Most affected were the poorest women who, as national figures have it, bear two more children than they want. Moreover, the women had to shoulder the added burden of lack of full and accurate information on family-planning methods-policy barriers to getting contraception methods, modern methods especially, contribute to unintended pregnancies. Another mouth to feed translates simply as an additional PhP36 daily expense on food and a PhP1-2 million hedge fund for education. The reproductive-health and family-planning policies espoused hewed, as women's rights group Linangan ng Kababaihan, Inc. (LIKHAAN) noted, "not to medical standards but to the moral standards of the Catholic Church." Apparently, even the Department of Health isn't immune from a policy contagion, as LIKHAAN pointed out: "In 2001, the DOH, without public notice, banned the emergency contraceptive Postinor in response to the allegation of a conservative Catholic group that Postinor is an 'abortifacient.' The ban was maintained despite the findings of a DOH technical committee that Postinor is not an abortifacient and should be relisted." Akin to summoning a priest to see to a hospital's emergency room, the DOH at that time "contracted with a lay Catholic organization to implement the Department's national family-planning (NFP) program, granting them PhP50 million to promote and teach NFP," LIKHAAN revealed. With the Atienza order firmly in place, Manila's poor womenfolk were denied a major source of affordable family-planning services-and some 70 percent of people rely on the government for such services including female sterilization, oral pills, intrauterine devices, and injectables.. Said LIKHAAN: "It is these women who face the greatest barriers in accessing family planning methods, and tend more often to suffer the physical, psychological, economic, and social consequences of unintended pregnancies." Take this dweller from the seedy precincts of San Andres. Having eight children to feed and care for has stretched the PhP150 daily income that Tina Montales (not her real name), 36, and her husband eke out from scavenging: "My husband lost his job as security guard after he was unable to pay more than PhP3,000 needed to renew his license." She added: "My family's breakfast includes three sachets of coffee and a few pieces of pandesal. One kilo of rice is insufficient for lunch and dinner. We make do with soy sauce or salt if we can't afford to buy PhP10 cooked vegetable for lunch or dried fish for dinner. If our daily earnings amount to below PhP70, we only have bread for dinner." This sob story is repeated many times over in the city's claptrap settlements and ramshackle villages. In the last seven years, the same story-with minor variants-was also perpetrated, no thanks to a well-intentioned Atienza order whose harrowing LIKHAAN has documented in a 2007 report entitled Imposing Misery: The Impact of Manila's Contraception Ban on Women and Families. Thus far, the steps taken by LIKHAAN still fall short of challenging a local-government policy before a court of law-none of the mothers presented in the documented 76 stories dared muster the resolve to go to court to plead their case. Citizens who feel their rights have been violated by the policy can file a petition in the courts, including the Supreme Court. However, even nongovernment organizations and providers of family-planning information and services aren't exempt from harassment and city-hall pressure. Recounted LIKHAAN: "A Quezon City-based women's NGO used to provide a range of reproductive-health services through a network of clinics in Metro Manila. Its clinic in Baseco was one of the main outlets for family-planning services in the area. The clinic closed down in 2005-even though the clinic complied with all the requirements of the city hall, it was denied renewal of its license to operate." Relates the NGO's former executive director: "Even the barangay captain started to feel the pressure of working with us when we were providing artificial methods. She was a staunch advocate of family planning, and for a long time she was working with us. It was only after the [Atienza] EO that she backed out. She kept telling us, 'Don't be public with our relationship, don't show them that you're close to us.' The pressure was just too much for her, city hall was really bearing down on the barangay." A local city health official, however, belied the claim: "I'm surprised that they just left. I don't think they lost their permit; they just left. Probably they were advised to follow certain guidelines, which they didn't want to follow." Not all city health workers share Atienza's stand on family planning, especially those who have been in the service for decades. Noted erstwhile city councilor Cita Astals: "A lot of the doctors are very frustrated with the policy because they have no choice. They are afraid of getting fired, so they keep their feelings to themselves." LIKHAAN pointed to a provision in the Local Government Code that could be used to strengthen a case. Section 60 says that an elected official may be disciplined, suspended, or yanked out of office for "culpable violation of the Constitution, gross negligence, dereliction of duty, and abuse of authority." Short of nudging lawyers and more militant advocates to settle policy issues in court, LIKHAAN stressed that a successful case "could set legal precedent and deter both local- and national-government executives from issuing policies similar to the Atienza order. "Successful or not, a legal complaint is an important vehicle fir publicizing the ill effects of and opposition to the policy, as well as for raising awareness about family planning and reproductive health as a human-rights and human-development issue," LIKHAAN said. An official at the Manila Department of Social Welfare said it welcomes any legal challenge: "If Manila is violating some policies, we are just waiting to be sued, The policy was implemented many years ago. The DOH, the national government, has not said anything. We are just waiting to be called to attention. Nobody calls our attention." Likely lost in the policy battle lines are the small voices like Monet Maglaya's. Said the 44-year old lavandera and mother to a brood of seven children: "The mayor's policy has made [life] more difficult for women like me. He does not understand how it is to be poor." M
Dong de los Reyes, Contributing Editor
If nutritional health is the measure of a nation's well-being, the recent findings of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) may point to a populace in a rift-some trudge to their graves doing what the late Mohandas K. Gandhi did in passive protest against India's British colonial rulers, i.e. fast to the death, while others hardly budge off their couches, divans, or benches and just plop dead from sheer overeating and inactivity. The FNRI dietary survey covered all the 17 regions and 79 provinces of the country and sampled some 5,514 households and 25,000 individuals. "The dietary survey consists of individual interviews and actual weighing of food to be consumed by households," cites Dr. Felicidad Velandria, a research specialist of the FNRI. FNRI has been conducting surveys since 1978. But in 1998, FNRI did more than a look-see at the food intake of Filipinos. They focused on chronic risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and lipid count, with the support of the Philippine Lipid Society, Philippine Diabetes Association, and Philippine Society of Hypertension. Backstopped by the Department of Health and 14 medical societies, FNRI's 2003 survey zeroed in on the emerging prevalence of chronic diseases in the country. Undernourished, underweight, and stunt-ed kids are still trenchant in the under-five age group-but their numbers have declined. Explains Velandria: "From 1998 to 2003, the prevalence of underweight has declined by 7.6 [percentage points]-from 34.5 to 26.9 percent. Stunting declined 10 [points] from 39.9 to 29.9 percent." Or in plain figures, there was more than one underweight for every three children back in 1998. By 2003, there were 27 underweight for every 100 kids under five years old. In 1998, two in five children were stunted. By 2003, less than one in every three children was stunted. Among six- to 10-year-olds, underweight dropped from more than one in every three in 1998 to one underweight in every four children by 2003. The number of stunted children also went down by nine percent, according to FNRI findings. In adults 20 years old and over, prevalence of chronic energy deficiency was 12.5 percent in 2003 while there was one obese in every four Filipinos, especially among the female population in which nearly three of every 10-or 27.2 percent-were on the plump side. One among five males bulged. "The problem of overweight among the adult population is highlighted when you use the wait-hip ratio (WCR) and waist-circumference parameters. Using waist-hip ratio as an index of abdominal fat distribution, the waist circumference [points up] abdominal fat mass," explains Velandria. The term "android obesity" turned up in the FNRI 2003 survey report. Points out Velandria: "When you use the WHR parameter comparing1998 and 2003, prevalence of android obesity was 54.8 percent (for both males and females). Whereas if you use waist circumference, the rate of android obesity is higher among females-from 10.7 percent in 1998 to 18.3 percent by 2003." With totted out figures like those, we're probably looking forward to less sexier and not too pleasingly plump R2D2 figures in the years to come. The lean-and-mean figure can be ballooning into blobs of sorry-looking masses with the menace of cardiovascular diseases and sedentary-lifestyle ailments like diabetes and strokes looming before the populace. "The total cholesterol levels of Filipino adults 20 years old and above doubled from four percent to 8.5 percent," she notes. However, FNRI maintains that there is no evidence to point to a lower level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL or the good cholesterol) among the populace in 2003 as measurements used in the previous and the latest surveys were different. Touching base at grassroots and coming to grips at the less than palatable nutritional status of Filipinos nationwide, FNRI can't do more as its hands are tied by Executive Order 128, which created it as an agency programmed to carry out surveys on nutrition. The generated data are passed on to policy makers in both private and public sectors, which in turn, are expected to set up mechanisms to bolster nutrition awareness and better dietary habits among the populace or foster research and development in food technology. In the light of findings in the 2003 survey, FNRI recommends policymakers to address the double burden of undernutrition in children and overweight among adults. This, according to Velandria, calls for: o Reducing the number of newborns with low birth weight. o Reducing poor child growth. o Improving infant and child feeding practices, that is, exclusive breastfeeding. o Promoting appropriate complementary feeding. o Promoting positive changes in dietary patterns, that is, increasing milk intake and consumption of fortified foods. o Reversing the negative changes in dietary pattern, i.e. declining intake in fruits, vegetables, tubers and other traditional staples vis-à-vis increasing consumption of sugars. o Promoting physical activity. M
Iron deficiency is the most common form of nutrient malnutrition and is rated as one of the 10 leading causes of mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost worldwide (World Health Report, 2002). It accounts for 20 percent of all maternal deaths, since the prevalence of anemia in women increases from 30 percent to 42 percent during pregnancy. In the Philippines, the 1998 national nu-trition survey reported even higher preva-lence rates: 50.7 percent for pregnant and 45.6 percent for lactating women. Major causes include low intake of iron-rich foods (only 67.4 percent of the recommended dietary allowance for iron); the presence of inhibitors such as phytates in rice; low intake of iron-absorption enhancers such as vitamin C (the intake of which, in turn, is only 73 percent of the RDA); intestinal parasitism; and increased requirements such as pregnancy.
Along with iron deficiency, folic-acid deficiency also results in clinically significant anemia that may lead to production of red blood cells that are large but less in number (megaloblastic anemia). Folic acid is a water-soluble B vitamin formed by intestinal bacteria that is essential for growth and cellular repair, since it is an important component of DNA and RNA. It aids in the formation and maturation of red blood cells, and deficiency commonly results from poor nutrition (lack of citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables in the diet), increased requirements (pregnancy and sickle-cell disease), and poor absorption (too much alcohol, advanced age). Fatigue is often the first sign of anemia, with other signs and symptoms such as anorexia (loss of appetite), pale skin, weakness, and weight loss. More importantly during pregnancy, inadequate folic-acid levels have been implicated in neural-tube defects in the developing fetus, particularly a condition called spina bifida, where the baby's brain and spinal cord are not fully formed. Research show that adequate amounts of folic acid in the diet can prevent up to one-half of these birth defects, especially if women of reproductive age start taking folic-acid supplements even before conception, since women who were vitamin-B- and folate-deficient prior to conception still had low-birth-weight babies and poor outcomes.
Considering this, the Department of Health (DOH) implemented an iron- and folate-supplementation program for this high-risk group of pregnant and lactating women as early as three decades ago (1977). The DOH encouraged pregnant and lactating women to supplement their diets with 60-mg elemental iron and two-mg folic acid twice a day. Now revised, the new Guidelines on Micronutrient Supplementation recommends a daily intake of 60-mg elemental iron and 400-µg folic acid as soon as pregnancy is confirmed. Pregnant women should follow this recommendation for at least six months during the entire pregnancy, and should also be continued for three more months post-delivery. Still, strict adherence to the intake of iron and folate supplements is frequently poor due to a variety of not-so pleasant experiences such as nausea, a metallic aftertaste, and blackish fecal discoloration. Because of this, the World Health Organi-zation Western Pacific Office (WHO/WPRO) suggests increasing the effectiveness of iron-folate-supplementation programs by adopting the strategy of weekly dosing as synchronized with the turnover of intestinal mucosal cells. This would result in fewer side effects. In addition, implementing sup-plementation projects becomes easier in the community, especially in developing countries like the Philippines. The DOH has also set up a food-fortification program via the Food Fortification Act of 2000, so that micronutrient malnutrition in the Philippines can be addressed. The food-fortification program especially targets children and women of reproductive age, and gives emphasis to fighting deficiencies in iron, vitamin A, and iodine. This five-year strategy called Sangkap Pinoy also mandates food manufacturers to fortify cooking oil with vitamin A, wheat flour with vitamin A and iron, refined sugar with vitamin A and rice with iron, to combat iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) throughout the country. M
Dong de los Reyes, Contributing Editor
In a maiden foray into one of the country's poorest regions in 1982, Dr. William Magee left behind 300 children-and their sea of malformed faces went with him, a tide fire-branded into memory that wouldn't go away and haunt him. He was told: "If you can come back, these children will still be here." "And so as we left we knew we turned away hundreds of children who had no idea when they were going to be operated on in the future or what facilities might be available to repair the clefts in the lips and palates," he mused. Around 300 families arrived hoping to get reconstructive surgery for their children with cleft lips and palates-an understaffed medical team could only treat 40 kids. He vowed to return. Once back in Norfolk, Virginia, the Magees sought out donations of surgical equipment and supplies, raised funds, and gathered a volunteer group of doctors, nurses, and technicians for another medical mission to the Philippines. So he came back. Because there is happiness and warmth in this country blighted by poverty and there is hope someone will provide the funding to send the volunteers back to the villages. "Because we can't go back to our own lives as usual," he confessed, kindled with a new-found sense of mission after that 1982 medical mission with his wife in the rural outskirts of Naga City. That mission was called Operation Smile in an effort to bring change into people's lives "one smile at a time." What began as a volunteer group of family and friends grew into a worldwide volunteer organization bankrolled by corporate giants in various industries including Abbott, which has provided global support to the undertaking for over 13 years. "Abbott has supported Operation Smile for many years, and once again is providing critical support as we work to transform the lives of children through our World Journey of Smiles initiative," said Magee, cofounder and chief executive of Operation Smile. "We are proud to be their partner in improving the health of children and adults around the world." Abbott Sevorane has been the anesthesia of Operation Smile medical missions globally. Mission organizers said Operation Smile currently supports international and in-country medical missions in 25 countries, among them Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gaza Strip/West Bank, Honduras, India, Jordan, Kenya, Laos, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Operation Smile has also set up offices in key cities-Hong Kong, London, Dublin, Brisbane, Rome, Los Angeles, and New York-raising funds and awareness to support international programs. The volunteer organization has also created a global medical institution made up of an international network of teaching hospitals and university partners to help train health-care professionals. Looking back at that life-changing moment in his first visit to the Philippines, the plastic surgeon mused: "In life there are no ordinary moments. Most times we just don't recognize those significant moments."
After a quarter of a century of traveling throughout the globe to perform such surgeries free of charge, Magee, his wife Kathleen-a former nurse and clinical social worker-have returned again, this time with an army of volunteers to pay homage to the birthplace of Operation Smile. Magee carried out the first surgical operation in Naga City to kick-start the 40 simultaneous medical missions in 25 countries- the Philippines served as launch pad for a worldwide biggest-ever surgical mission tabbed as "World Journey of Smiles." The global mission treated some 5,000 children with facial deformities. As part of the 25th-anniversary celebration, Operation Smile also unveiled fresh initiatives to build self-sufficiency in some partner countries. In the Philippines plans include setting up comprehensive cleft-care centers in Ospital ng Makati, the Broken-shire Hospital in Davao, and a center in Cebu City to carry out surgeries and see to Operation Smile patients the whole year round. The global reach-out believes that by creating smiles, lives are changed, humanity is healed-the impact of a facial deformity on a child is more than skin-deep, "and children are the only language we have in common," stressed Operation Smile Philippines vice chair Edith Villanueva. Philippine statistics estimate that one of every 5,000 babies born every year has a cleft lip, a cleft palate, or both-roughly 4,004 Filipinos out of 2 million born every year have this deformity. Also, cleft lips and palates are among the top 12 birth defects in the country, according to the Philippine Birth Defect Registry. The condition is most prevalent among low-income groups. Coughing up anywhere from PhP60,000 to PhP100,000 for a 45-minute surgery to correct the deformity is beyond the reach of a poor man's pockets. Looking back in fondness at the 1982 medical mission he plunged into with his wife plus a clutch of volunteers, Magee can only affirm: "Some things change, some don't. Reason can lead to conclusions but emotion leads to action." M
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