Ecuador Birth Defects

(c) 2010 Cary Jobe for A Steady Drip Magazine

At the base of “The Throat of Fire”, the ever erupting Tungurahua Volcano, sits a little slice of paradise called Ambato, Ecuador, where the climate is unbeatable, the mountains gorgeous and the flowering trees abundant.

I spent ten days with a group of doctors from the USA who are but one group who annually volunteer their time to perform reconstructive surgery on kids born with cleft palates, microtia (missing ear lobes), and other birth defects.  In developing countries such as Ecuador the rate of cleft palate and microtia is as high as 1 in 350 births for clefting and 1 in 5000 for microtia. In Ambato and Quito it seemed especially prevalent. Clefting and microtia… are thought to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Most families have no access to government sponsored health insurance, thus organizations such as Medical Mission Ecuador, Hugs, and the Smile Train are imperative to help these kids through individual donations. Witnessing a newborn with a severe cleft palate become completely dehydrated as a result of its inability to latch on and suckle milk from their mother’s breast, and then in surgery witnessing the anesthesiologist struggle to get a good vein in this poor infant’s dehydrated arm, was eye-opening enough for me to want to help.

If you are curious to know more, please email me or go to  SmileTrain; http://www.smiletrain.org, or Medical Missions; http://www.mmfc.org/ to see how you can contribute.

ALL PHOTOS ARE © CARY JOBE IMAGES.  (It is illegal to use these images in any way without photographer’s permission).