The Reporter: February 1997, Vol.8, No.1
The Global Campus
Columbia's Mission to Colombia

Photo by Dr. Steven Roser A very happy postoperative child whose cleft lip/palate was repaired by a medical team from Columbia that traveled to Santa Marta, Colombia, last October.

Every October for the past five years, Dr. Steven Roser and a team from CPMC have ended up somewhere in Latin America. Although the precise destination for the professor of clinical dental and oral surgery has changed some years, the mission has remained the same.

Dr. Roser organizes a group of volunteers from the medical center--including surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and assistants--to travel to an area of Latin America in which many children with cleft lips/palates would otherwise go untreated due to limited medical access.

Last year's group traveled to Santa Marta on the north coast of Colombia. The mission was a cooperative effort among CPMC, Healing the Children Northeast, and Unidos por un Mañana (United for the Future, or UNIMA). Healing the Children sponsors about 15 medical missions each year, mainly to Central America and South America, and UNIMA is a 2-year-old organization dedicated to providing medical care for the indigent children of Santa Marta and surrounding areas.

"The rate of cleft lip/palate to live births in the United States is approximately 1 in 1,000," says Dr. Roser. "Among the South American Indian population, that rate is from 1 in 200 to 1 in 300." Access to medical care there is often so limited that many cleft lips/palates go unrepaired for many years. "It completely amazed the team to meet an 18-year-old man with an unrepaired cleft lip and palate," he says.

During one week in October, the 16-member team traveled to Santa Marta, unpacked their predelivered supplies, set up two operating rooms in a local hospital, and admitted, operated on, and discharged 54 patients. The team would not leave the hospital each day until the last operative patient had recovered, all the children on the floors were examined, and supplies and equipment were stored for the night. UNIMA was able to coordinate follow-up care, such as suture removal for the children. "All of us felt fatigued from the long hours of work," says Dr. Roser, "but the overwhelming feeling was of having given something back to mankind. How often do health workers receive applause from their patients just for being there? We were applauded when we entered the hospital on the first day."

The team, mostly from CPMC, also treated children with extensive burn scars, congenitally fused fingers and toes, syndactyly, and other severe facial or limb deformities. "As we left our patients and our new friends in Santa Marta,"says Dr. Roser, "we felt renewed and ready to work for another year until next October when we will again return to Colombia."