Durban - Two Durban women, a paediatrician and a filmmaker, are in Malawi with an international medical team, providing life changing surgery to almost 100 children born with cleft lips and palates.
International non-profit organisation, Operation Smile, assembled a specialist all female team of more than 80 volunteers from across the world who have spent the past week in Lilongwe, helping to change the lives of 83 children.
Children with cleft malformations often struggle to eat and talk while many may also have problems with their ears.
Dr Pamela Rapiti, a senior specialist paediatric neurologist and lecturer with ties to the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, says she began volunteering with the organisation after the death of her sister, Dr Jayan Rapiti a Cape Town based physician who had the most ‘amazing’ smile.
Helping these children to smile and live normal lives, is her way of keeping her sister’s memory alive.
This time around though she was in Malawi in honour of her dad Sonny Rapiti who recently died.
“Together with my mum their progressive thinking empowered my (3) siblings and I to follow careers in medicine. This gave me the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful family of volunteers that offers their skill and time to improve the lives of children,” Rapiti said.
Her role as the post anaesthesia care team leader means that she is responsible for the safe recovery of patients following operations and monitoring them for complications following anaesthesia and surgery.
Rapiti who joined Operation Smile in 2006 has already completed 23 missions with the organisation.
She said it was a powerful feeling knowing that they had the ability to change children’s lives, especially with “something very simple and mundane that I do every day.”
For patient imaging photographer, Magagodi Dingalo, working with Operation Smile is an emotional experience.
Dingalo who is a documentary maker and video editor is responsible for taking photographs of each child, before they undergo surgery, while it is underway and track their progress thereafter.
“It is very emotional. With children under four it is okay, but with anybody who is grown and can't talk, like teenagers and adults, it is very moving because they feel insecure about their looks.”
She takes photographs of the children while they still have cleft lips or palates - after the operation they look completely different.
Dingalo who has been on 25 missions with Operation Smile previously made a documentary of the conjoined twin girls born in Pongola in 2016.
She said being part of that process was equally emotional because once they were on the operating table and the incision was made, everyone started clapping when they discovered that the girls had separate hearts.
Operation Smile’s Sarah Scarth said children born with cleft malformations were usually from low income countries where the burden of disease was high.
She said the children were often ostracised, bullied, hidden away and denied an education.
Cleft malformations resulted from a number of issues including malnutrition, genetics, certain environmental practices and possibly cooking over open fires, said Scarth.
She said usually men received preference when it came to training and jobs, but through the Women in Medicine surgical programme, women could mentor, educate and upskill each other.
The Independent on Saturday