The success of the ENT cleft team at Kijabe is dependent upon the collaboration of several evangelical and humanitarian organizations. The volunteers on the ENT cleft lip and cleft palate team include seven board-certified otolaryngologists and facial plastic surgeons organized through Samaritan’s Purse, which is widely known for its recent work in New Orleans and in Haiti.  Our current team also includes a family physician, a pediatric cardiologist, a nurse and three students. Hospital bills of approximately $250 per child are funded by donations to The Smile Train. Grants Most of our medications, sutures and disposable anesthesia supplies are donated independently.

Kijabe Hospital, as well as most of the mission compound, is owned by Africa Inland Church (AIC) and managed by Cure International.  Providing free or discounted care to indigent people throughout east Africa, Kijabe Hospital now contains the second busiest operating room in Kenya.  Next door is the much smaller AIC-Cure Children’s Hospital, which is used primarily for orthopedic surgery on children.  Three times a year, the U.S. ENT team occupies the entire children’s hospital for two weeks of cleft lip and palate repairs.

Typically we treat one hundred patients over two weeks.  Patients are identified at mobile health clinics throughout Kenya, including Dadaab along the border to Somalia, where over one quarter million refugees are encamped.  In addition, radio advertisements recruited a third of our patients.

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In his Service,

Mike Armstrong, MD