Operation Smile is expanding its efforts to improve access to safe, effective surgical care.
Here are five highlights:
1. An estimated more than 2 billion people worldwide lack access to any surgical care, often due to economic constraints, the lack of medical personnel and surgical equipment or because they reside in remote locations far away from surgical sites.
2. Operation Smile is now investing $250 million over the next five years to increase efforts to transfer medical expertise to improve surgical capacity in 40 countries, eradicate the backlog of hard-to-access cleft patients and provide surgeries to countless children and young adults.
3. In 2015, Operation Smile conducted 161 medical missions across 112 sites in 29 countries, including new sites in Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Ghana.
4. In the first three months of 2016, Operation Smile medical volunteers will perform 3,000 surgeries over the course of 39 medical missions in 19 countries.
5. Operation Smile is an international medical charity that provides free surgeries to children in developing countries who are born with cleft lip, cleft palate or other facial deformities.