“Work” is in parenthesis for good reason. We believe if you do what you love to do, then you will never work a day in your life. This can’t be more true when helping a child with a deformity. We us our successful plastic surgery practice to give our talents to some of the most unfortunate mission babies and children in the world.
We perform reconstructive surgery on children from Burkina Faso, Guana, the Ivory Coast, and Uganda. These sweet children are brought from areas of the world were no treatment is available. They would most likely die of starvation if not infanticide when they are born into the primitive cultures found in the deep bush of Africa. Some of the stories of parents trying to save their babies by hiding them from these customs are harrowing.
The Ray of Hope Medical Missions is a not-for-profit foundation that finds these babies and children and bring them to the U.S.A on a one year medical visa to completely reconstruct their deformities. They fund raise for travel, find a host family, and arrange for medical and surgical care. The surgeries and care provided by our plastic surgeons and other specialists such as Dr. Baron Whateley, DDS,MS (Othodontics), Dr. Stephen Schreck, MD (ENT) and Dr. Mulokozi Lugakingira, DDS (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and our local hospitals (Dupont and Parkview Hospitals) are all free of charge.
Once the reconstructive and medical efforts are complete, the children are returned to Africa to their families but sorely missed by the host families.
Please see Siriki’s story at the bottom of the page.
One example is Siriki (see pictures below toward bottom of page). He was a Burkina Faso baby who was 8 pounds at birth and 4 pounds upon his arrival in the US. The parents hid Siriki from the village witch doctor who wanted to take the him away as they do with such deformities. Siriki was located by Ray of Hope Medical Missions and brought to the US. After a year of nutritional rehabilitation and another year of reconstruction by Dr. Severinac and his team, Rebecca Ghent, Ray of Hopes Founder and Director, brought Siriki back to the village he came from. When she asked the witch doctor what he thought of Siriki now, he said “Now that the God’s have intervened, Siriki is ok”.
