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Operation Smile serving 400 cleft patients in Latin America and Caribbean

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, Operation Smile volunteers are providing free cleft lip and cleft palate surgery to hundreds of patients as part of Continuing Promise, the U.S. Navy humanitarian assistance mission.

The 5-month Navy mission on the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, ends Sept. 1 after 11 mission stops in Belize, Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Panama.

Nicaragua will host simultaneous medical missions in Puerto Cabezas, Estelí, Juigalpa and two sites in Managua, according to the press release.

The Operation Smile medical team includes plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, dentists and speech therapists who are providing free cleft surgery to 400 patients at the stops in

Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Panama.

This partnership is the seventh time Operation Smile has been invited to participate in a Navy humanitarian mission.

Source: www.operationsmile.org