Page 5 - September 2018 Gears & Ears

Gears and Ears

Journal of The Rotary Club of Lake Buena Vista
September 2018

Rotarians in Chile and the U.S. Provide Surgeries

By Diana Schoberg Photos by Daniela Prado Sarasúa

Ricardo Román was shopping with his wife at a department store in Chile in 2012
when a woman in her early 20s approached him. He didn’t recognize her, he confesses
through an interpreter, but there were two good reasons: He had last seen her more
than a decade earlier – and her smile had changed drastically.
Román, a member of the Rotary Club of Reñaca, Chile, is the national coordinator of
a program that has helped thousands of children in Chile with cleft lips, cleft palates,

and other birth defects. “She told me, ‘This is my Rotarian smile,’” he recalls, his
voice full of emotion. “It was a very gratifying moment.”

In 2004, Rotarians in Chile assumed leadership of the program in their country.
Over the years, Chilean doctors became more involved and eventually the program
expanded to include breast reconstruction for cancer patients.

“It’s a great commentary on Rotary that you’ve got people in a Spanish-speaking
country and people in an English-speaking country working together to get things
accomplished,” says James Lehman, a plastic surgeon who joined the Rotary Club of
Fairlawn, Ohio, USA, after working with Rotarians in Chile.
In February, Lehman and a team of U.S. surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses
visited Iquique, a city about 80 miles south of Chile’s northern border. With financial
help from the nearby Collahuasi copper mine, local Rotarians coordinate and pay for
the medical team’s food, lodging, and in-country transportation.

More than 250 potential patients lined up early on a Saturday morning outside

Using four operating rooms – one for cleft
lip or palate, one for ear reconstruction,
one for breast reconstruction, and one
for other issues – the team got to work.
Patients were chosen based on need and on
the complexity of the surgery. By the end
of their stay, the surgeons and their staff
had operated on 82 patients. In many cases,

however, the complete reconstruction may
take multiple surgeries, and some patients

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