Giving Beauty Back to the Children

Each year in Russia, 30,000 children are born with facial deformities and abnormalities to the skull. Another 20,000 children experience such defects due to trauma or other illnesses developed after birth.

Only few hospitals in all of Russia have specialized surgeons to undertake cases that often require multiple surgeries and highly advanced medical technology. Costly operations are often put off and these children grow up ostracized by their peers who often mock their unsightly appearance.

Families often fall apart as a result. The stress of having a sick son or daughter leads to isolation, embarrassment, disappointment and financial hardship and marriages often do not survive the ordeal.

Deformed children, highly conscious of how they look, suffer from maladaptive behaviors, irritability, depression and some attempt suicide.

Some parents solve the problem by sending their kid to an orphanage. Others have appealed to the general public for direct financial assistance for necessary operations by writing letters to newspapers. This latter approach has led to the Society’s most recent innovative undertaking on behalf of Russian children this year.

Depending on the case, surgeries range from $2,500 to $5,000, which is far beyond the means of the families involved. Professor Roginsky insists that early diagnosis and treatment of facial deformities is critical not only for the patients’ physical health, but psychological development and social integration as well.

While many of these children will undergo multiple surgeries over a period of time, it is better to fix the problem before awareness of a defect sets in and damages self esteem for life.

Unfortunately, the Russian government has been short-sighted in this regard. Russia spends 56,000 roubles a year to support one orphan, but to date, has not allocated sufficient funding for the timely treatment of the deformities that cause many parents to abandon their children in the first place.

The Russian Aid Foundation is a charity formed by the daily newspaper Kommersant. Through its web site and the space allotted to its cause in Kommersant, the Russian Aid Foundation has provided an important forum for children suffering from all types of diseases (facial deformities, leukaemia, scoliosis, heart defects, cerebral palsy) to ask the average Russian to make a donation that will make treatment possible. The Foundation scrupulously investigates each case to avoid fraudulent appeals and all money is channelled directly to the medical institution providing the care. RCWS is now working with the Russian Aid Foundation specifically to raise funds that will be used by the Center for Maxillofacial Surgery on children needing treatment of facial deformities. The project is called “Let’s Give Beauty Back to the Children.”

Most of the children who go to the Center for Maxillofacial Surgery don’t really believe they can be helped. Using the most advanced medical micro technology, computers and techniques, Professor Roginsky and his staff have seen their patients learn to smile for the first time and watch, as their personalities grow more hopeful and childlike.

Source: http://www.rcws.org/programs_medical.htm