Opération Sourire treats children, young people and adults.

However, the work of Opération Sourire goes well beyond the surgical sessions themselves.

Treating patients
Noma disease, which is virtually unknown in Europe, kills between 90,000 and 450,000 children a year. If caught early, it can be cured with a simple antibiotic treatment, hygiene education and improved nutrition. But if left to develop, it eats away at the mouth and face.

Our surgeons have carried out extensive work in Niger and become a point of reference for local staff to learn about the complex surgery this pathology requires.

In Pakistan, a few programmes focus on women burnt by acid, victims of so-called "Honour Revenge" attacks. The programme provides both medical care and a forum where the women can express themselves and start to repair the emotional as well as the physical damage such attacks cause.

The largest group we treat is children with cleft lips and palates. As babies, they often find it difficult to feed and as children, they are excluded from society, from play, or even school.

Capacity building
We open and maintain local facilities for pre-operative and post-operative care and ensure that local doctors have the skills necessary to run them without us. Training is a gradual process, beginning with pre and post operative surgery and care where local surgeons shadow the team.

The next step is performing surgical procedures with supervision and then solo with the ultimate goal of teaching each other. Our objective is to provide facilities and training for local surgeons in the communities we serve, where we already have a year round presence through our primary care activities - new plastic surgery centres are being set up in Niger and Benin for example.

During our missions, we also train operating theatre staff, anaesthetists and nurses; we provide training on hygiene, storage and scheduling.

Each mission is meticulously prepared. Working closely with local coordinators and doctors, patients are identified and surgery is scheduled so that we can perform around 40 operations over a 2-week period.

Thanks to our local partners we can now follow up on 90% of our patients, from one year to the next. In the long run, local staff trained in plastic surgery can take on 70% of the cases independently.