The organisation has introduced a support group for parents known as ‘Cleft Friends’, which aims to have mothers speak on their respective experiences caring for children with facial abnormalities and possibly help others in the process. The Smile Foundation’s Operations Executive Director, Moira Gerszt, spoke to OFM News on the added psychosocial support as 22 minors undergo reconstructive surgery at the Universitas Academic Hospital in Bloemfontein this week.

She says one of the biggest challenges the foundation faced during the coronavirus pandemic was that they couldn’t help all of the children that needed surgery. According to Gerszt, many parents faced increased anxiety during the hard lockdown in 2020, and parents had to be provided with counselling telephonically.

Some of the procedures to be performed at the Universitas Hospital this week, include cleft and palate reconstruction, craniofacial surgery as well as ear and nose reconstructive surgeries.

This year’s four Smile Weeks are sponsored by the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA). Next week the foundation will be at the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital in Kimberley where children from around the Northern Cape with facial abnormalities and burn wounds will undergo surgery.

The Smile Foundation was only able to resume surgery in November 2020 due to the pandemic. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Smile Foundation, Hedley Lewis, previously expressed his gratitude to the medical fraternity for their hard work during the pandemic. “We just want to thank the frontline - the surgeons, the doctors, the hospital management - for getting us in a position that we could actually have this opportunity, for the curve to have been reduced,” says Lewis passionately.

OFM News