After 12 surgeries, including number of failed ones, Amrita and her family were at the brink of giving up…
The World Care program is one of Operation Smile Australia’s signature projects where patients with complicated cases are brought to Australia for advanced surgeries.
We’ve cared for 38 patients over the years.
Amrita is our 38th World Care patient and she was already in Australia when she contacted us.
Amrita is from Mongolia and she has had 12 surgeries already in her home country for her congenital cleft condition. Surgeons have tried multiple different methods to close her cleft palate but most of the attempts failed.
In February 2020, right before the pandemic border closure, she came to Australia with her sister to visit a relative. The trip was arranged to cheer her up after another failed surgery. She was supposed to go back in April that year for her last surgery. The doctors were planning to try one last time and they’ve informed her that if that one fails again, they wouldn’t be able to help her any longer.
But because of the pandemic travel restriction, Amrita couldn’t go back. Desperate for medical help, she contacted Operation Smile Australia.
We accepted her as one of our World Care patient and our founder Dr. Richard Lewandowski along with our medical volunteers performed two surgeries to close her palate and alveolar bone structure with her knee tissue. The surgeries took 8 and 6 hours respectively and both were successful.
Her life has changed for the better since.
She speaks Mongolian, English, Mandarin and Japanese. But due to unrepaired cleft, few people could understand her speech. Now she can fully express herself in the languages she speaks.
She is no longer has to eat soft food as she can now chew properly. And for the first time ever, after surgery, Amrita was able to use a straw when drinking.
She is currently studying electrical engineering in Japan and her dream is to build medical equipment and robots to help assist with the surgical backlog in third-world countries.