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Our mission is to provide children suffering from
urgent medical conditions in under-resourced areas of the world
with the compassion and care that can heal them.
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Healing Profile: David Fenner, MD
Ask pediatrician David Fenner why he's going on yet another mission -- his 20th -- with HTCNE's Medical Teams Abroad. He'll tell you that the despite the long travel times, the frugal accommodations, and the punishing schedules, this is work that makes him happy. "We typically start surgeries at 7:30 am, go until 11:00 pm, and then turn around and head back to the hospital the next morning."
Dave was recruited to Medical Teams Abroad by nurse colleagues at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, and since has traveled to Brazil, Ecuador, Thailand and Peru as a Team member. On November 5, he and a core Team head for the oldest city in Colombia -- Santa Marta, a small, busy port on the Caribbean in the department (state) of Magdalena. Most of the work the Team will do here involves surgeries and follow-up treatments to repair cleft palates, cleft lips, and speech defects.
Dave has been to Santa Marta a dozen times. He says that it's his favorite mission because of the many close relationships with families and local partners that he and the Teams have developed over the years. For example: "There's a wonderful group of charitable women on the ground --UNIMA -- who raise funds to help us out. They make all kinds of logistical arrangements, get us places to stay -- anything they can do for us, they do."
How do the families find out about Medical Teams Abroad? Outreach within the department of Magdalena by the government-run hospital where the Team works and by HTCNE's other local partners is fairly extensive and well-coordinated. These partners bring in children whose families are of very different ethnicities and socioeconomic levels from three main regions: Santa Marta, other coastal areas, and the north of the department, up the Magdalena River.
"A few families from the city of Santa Marta are considered middle class, but compared with how we measure middle class in this country, their resources are quite limited," Dave says. "For example, few have even running water or electricity in their homes. Most of the families from other coastal areas work in agriculture -- palms, bananas -- and they get to us by canoe or motorboat," he continues. The third group of families come from a small Andean Mountain offshoot of the Sierra Nevadas, near the boundary of Venezuela. "They arrive on-foot, by donkey cart, and some by motorcycle. Most are indigent. Many are from culturally- protected Indian tribes who struggle to keep their language and culture intact," Dave says.
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All told, Santa Marta Cleft Team members have been together for eleven missions. "Because we've become so well -established, we've been able to create a sustainable, ongoing paradigm of care-- we're not just a one-shot operation," Dave says. "We can get to babies with cleft lips and palates shortly after they're born, which is the absolute best time to perform reparative surgeries. And for older children we've operated on during earlier visits, we offer ongoing care to help with hearing and speech issues. A lot of kids have recurring ear problems, and their palates often
need additional repair, such as further surgery to close up the palate to improve the quality of their voices."
Dave says that for him, though, the screening process is the most satisfying part of all: "It's how we determine if the child is healthy enough for surgery --and it's also how we get to know the kids and their families. I
like to spend a lot of time with them, interact with them. Every year when we go back, I look to see if I know some of the kids and parents -- and I usually do.
The more kids and more families our Team can help, the happier we are."
This photo of John, from Santa Marta, shows what a difference our teams make.
John returns every year with his family,
sometimes just to say hello.
Last year, his mother made dessert for the entire Team!
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C
left surgery is simple and the results are life -altering!
With as little as $20 a month for one year, you ca
n pay for one child's cleft repair.
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Making Healing Happen: What You Can Do
- Do you shop on Amazon? Through Amazon Smile, you can designate HTCNE as your charity and a percentage of every eligible purchase you make is donated to us. Just click here and choose Healing The Children Northeast. It's easy!
- Are you in the military? Do you work as a civilian for the Federal government or the postal service? Then please consider designating Healing The Children Northeast as your Combined Federal Campaign beneficiary this year. Just click on this link -- and thank you: www.cfcvp.org/free-medical-surgical-and-dental-children
Your donation in any amount helps to support HTCNE's mission. You can make a one- time donation or you can donate monthly on our secure website. Just click the Visit our website button, at the bottom of the page.
If you have colleagues, family, or friends you think might want to know about HTCNE, please forward this e-newsletter to them.
Thank you for everything you do to help heal the children!
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Partners In Healing
- The India Project recently sponsored An Evening For Smiles in Manhattan to raise funds for several India missions -- including Healing The Children Northeast's -- coming up in January 2017. The India Project, founded in 1968 by a US-based plastic surgeon to deliver urgently-needed surgical care in his home country, is now headed by his daughter, a physician at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. HTCNE is delighted to be associated with this extraordinary organization.
- Vikon Surgical has just donated four state-of-the-art headlights that provide surgeons with a high- performing, consistently- bright white light, optimized color rendering and enhanced tissue differentiation. These headlights are important additions to our equipment arsenal, as the Medical Teams Abroad surgeons often must operate in less-than-optimal lighting conditions. Many thanks to Debbie Fritz, Medical Teams Abroad RN and HTCNE treasurer, for obtaining the donation, which is valued at over $28,000
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About Healing The Children Northeast
Healing The Children
Northeast grew out of the simple conviction that every child --no matter where or in what circumstances that child lives -- has a right to quality medical care.
In 1983, a Connecticut businesswoman, a pediatrician, and two
hospitals collaborated to identify children in urgent need of care from under-resourced areas of developing countries -- especially children suffering from disfiguring and disabling birth defects.
Soon the core group began to assemble medical professionals who would travel abroad at their own expense to heal these children. From this beginning Healing The Children Northeast (HTCNE) evolved, and in 1985 was incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)3.
Since then, through its primary program Medical Teams Abroad, HTCNE has donated surgical, medical, and dental care with an estimated value of $70 million to nearly 50,000 children in seven countries. In 2015 alone, the market-value cost of the care donated was over $3.7 million. HTCNE continues to seek out doctors, nurses, dentists, and other medical personnel who want to reach out with hearts and hands to help heal the most vulnerable of children.
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Healing The Children Northeast, Inc.
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