Our Activities

Surgery during humanitarian missions is the main means to attain our short-term objectives. Volunteer doctors supported by the logistic department of Emergenza Sorrisi reach the poorest areas of the world, to visit and operate freely on children with major facial malformations, who have no chance of healing in any other way. Surgical missions of doctors from Emergenza Sorrisi represent for these children and their families the only choice, and when we see children with major pathologies and local surgery is impossible, we organise a transfer to Italy to ensure they get the best treatment possible given the complexity of the pathology.

Surgery allows us to have immediate and consistent results, in curing facial malformation conditions.

An equally important objective of Emergenza Sorrisi during every humanitarian mission, is to make doctors of countries hosting our missions autonomous in giving suitable care to their patients. This medium-term objective pursues the principle of “Learning by Doing”, a sustainability strategy through teaching and learning, for foreign doctors following our training. Having trained doctors on site offers advantages in terms of decreasing the quantity of children with such conditions, as children can benefit from surgery in the same country without waiting for foreign doctors, and also because the population trusts and increases confidence in local health systems. In fact, due to the scarcity of well-trained doctors and nurses in developing countries, the population often trusts traditional medicine for healing and sometimes even sorcery, with a consequent lack of success with regards to recovery.

Apart from training local staff, it is most important to create Excellence centres equipped for the treatment of congenital facial malformations. With this objective, in the not-too-distant future surgical missions are not the only treatment possible for thousands of children. In Kurdistan, Iraq and Indonesia we have already set up the base for specialised structures inside hospitals where we have performed our surgical missions.