Stichting Interplast Holland is a charitable and humanitarian organisation which provides reconstructive surgery in developing countries for children and young adults with cleft lips and burn-related deformities. Every year a number of teams of experienced Dutch reconstructive plastic surgeons, operating theatre assistants, anaesthetists and anaesthetists assistants are sent out on missions.
The basis for this worldwide plastic surgery teamwork was laid at Stanford University in California where Interplast USA was founded in 1969. Interplast organisations were also founded in Europe, for instance in Germany and Italy. Interplast Holland began in 1991 and is at the moment active in Uganda, Yemen, Nigeria, Rwanda and Indonesia. In the nineteen nineties teams were sent to Vietnam, India and Pakistan among other countries.
All Interplast team members are experienced and professional people. They use their own leave days to go and work for Interplast abroad and receive no financial reward whatsoever.
Free operations
Interplast carries out reconstructive operations as part of its programme. This means that children with burns and cleft lips are eligible for treatment as are those with congenital deformities of the eyes, ears, hands, legs and genitals. Our young patients come from among the poorest population groups. They have no money for an operation and in developing countries there are no health insurers. This is why Interplast carries out all the operations free of charge.
Interplast teams are only deployed on request. Applications mostly come from local hospitals, health services, university institutions or assistance organisations which are already working in the country in question. Interplast makes no distinction by race, faith or political beliefs. The applications are assessed on the need for help, the nature of the complaint and the local options.
Huge differences
If a baby is born in the Netherlands with a cleft lip, jaw or pallet, a team of specialists is immediately ready and waiting. They ensure that the child can drink without any problems and that speech, hearing and visual appearance develop optimally.
In developing countries the situation is quite different. Generally speaking there are no doctors who have experience with operating cleft lips. No money is available for an operation abroad and babies with cleft lips are consequently seldom operated on. This means in the first place that the little food there is fails to be swallowed and comes out again through the nose. Moreover children with cleft lips are seen as small monsters who are kept out of sight as much as possible. They have no friends and normally do not attend school. Their future without an operation is bleak.
And the same equally applies to burns. In burns centres in the Netherlands people with burns are treated with exceptional skill. Burns are extremely common in developing countries. People cook on open fires and the majority of the population live in reed huts, which are heated using dangerous paraffin stoves. Children crawl around unattended and often end up in the smouldering ash of the fire. Because virtually no adequate first aid is available anywhere, burns in developing countries almost always result in disability. Burns patients have little chance on the labour market and are doomed to become beggars.
An Interplast operation lasting sometimes only sixty minutes not only improves the functioning of a leg or an arm, it may also give a child in particular the prospect of a better life.
Operating and learning
Local doctors and nurses play an active role in all of the Interplast programmes. They participate in the surgeries, help in the operating theatre and in this way they become quickly familiar with a number of reconstructive surgical and anaesthetic techniques.
Besides this practical form of teaching, team members, possibly in conjunction with the local universities, give lectures on the treatment of burns and cleft lips, anaesthetic techniques and the nursing aspect of the operations. Through this Interplast hopes that gradually the treatment of children with plastic surgical deformities will improve throughout the country. The teams will then become redundant and can begin on a new programme in a different country.
Annual reports
