How Smile Week is restoring smiles and changing lives

Surgeons perform reconstructive surgery, 12 November 2024, during the Smile Foundation’s Smile Week at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital. Throughout the week, 18 children with from underserved communities suffering from facial anomalies will undergo reconstructive surgery. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen

There is little enough to smile about these days – or at least it feels that way much of the time – but the fact that 18 young children have been given a chance at a normal life, is something to cheer.

The 18 toddlers from deprived communities all had facial disfigurements, like cleft palates.

Thanks to those involved in Smile Week at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, they will all be able to smile again.

Now there will be less chance of them being bullied later in life because of the disfigurement and they won’t have the speech or dental problems associated with conditions like a cleft palate.

ALSO READ: There’s no one to blame for a cleft palate

The reconstructive surgery involved surgeons and staff at the hospital and was arranged by the Smile Foundation and one of its major sponsors, Airports Company South Africa.

Smile Week is shining example of a joint effort between a charitable organisation and a major corporate player to make a difference in the lives of kids whom society may otherwise have forgotten about or, even worse, shunned and humiliated.

The surgeons and medical staff who gave their time and expertise are also to be saluted.

But, let’s all do what we can to help others in need.

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