THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 9, 1995 TAG: 9506080010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
I am grateful to Jo-Ann Musial (letter, June 2) for the opportunity to demonstrate how charity does begin at home.
The recent newspaper article about Augustine Disuma (``In eight hours a young girl's life changed - forever,'' news, May 9) was touching, a story in which we can take pride.
I can also understand the impression that is left - that many children are being ignored. I would like to give you a few facts about what Operation Smile has done at home.
Currently, Operation Smile is providing free medical and dental care to more than 4,000 children a year, thanks to the generosity of volunteers. To date, Operation Smile volunteers have provided free care to more than 23,000 individuals in the United States. This is far greater than the 14,500 children whom we have helped in 13 countries around the world.
In Norfolk, we have begun a program in Park Place with the help of the Department of Health in which volunteer dentists have to date treated more than 950 patients for free.
We have teamed up with Polaroid in placing a camera in every one of the 1,200 schools in New York City, where a screening system has been established to pro-actively find children who have fallen through the cracks or who don't have the resources to take care of their facial deformities. To date, more than 200 children have been treated free of charge by volunteer hospitals and medical personnel. This system has now been approved by the Philadelphia School Board. We are in the process of organizing the program in Baltimore, Boston and the Suffolk school systems. We hope to be able to march this program across the country to pro-actively seek out children who have needs to be sure that they are not abandoned.
There is also the intangible, difficult to articulate attitude that occurs when people travel with us on our missions. They always return more sensitive to the needs of people within our own community, more technically capable to help our own. They have remained active volunteers who continue to help and actually intensify their efforts to help those home.
Operation Smile continues to be dedicated to the needs that exist at home: The numbers document that priority. Operation Smile is also dedicated to being a bridge of peace and trust between people through the faces of children all over the world so that a more harmonious relationship can be developed that will ultimately provide security for all the citizens of our country.
WILLIAM P. MAGEE JR. D.D.S., M.D.
Chairman, co-founder
Operation Smile International
Norfolk, June 2, 1995 by CNB