In December 2014, a group of ten healthcare professionals from Ireland, joined 300 healthcare professionals from around the world to perform free life-changing surgery on children in Vietnam.
The group included: Plastic Surgeon, Prof Michael Early; nurses, Geraldine Cooney and Margaret O’Donnell and healthcare technology expert, Andrew Murphy, Chief Executive of Sláinte Healthcare.
The mission to Vietnam was organised by the not-for-profit organisation, Operation Smile that provides free cleft lip and palate repair surgeries to children worldwide. Since its establishment in 1982, Operation Smile has provided more than 220,000 free surgical procedures for children and young adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities in more than 60 countries. These surgeries are performed by thousands of medical volunteers from around the world.
Since 2003, Professor Early together with volunteers from Ireland, has travelled with Operation Smile on surgical missions to these countries including Belarus, Morocco, China, Cambodia, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and Thailand.
Commenting on his time in Vietnam, Andrew Murphy, Chief Executive, Sláinte Healthcare said: “I am extremely proud to be in a position to make the technology that we have created available to these children and medical professionals. I found it very insightful to be on the ground in Vietnam watching our technology in practice and more importantly seeing the real difference that Operation Smile makes to people’s lives. This is what really matters.”
Sláinte Healthcare supplies its electronic healthcare software, ‘VITRO’ to Operation Smile for free. It enables Operation Smile to collect patient data electronically during their global missions, thus removing their reliance on paper.
Check out the video here.
For further information on Sláinte Healthcare visit www.slaintehealthcare.com.