Past Missions

Healing the Children returned to Lima, Peru for our 12th medical mission there November 5-10th, 2023. During the week our team performed surgery on 110 patients and a total of 139 procedures were done. 91 patients were children with cleft lip and cleft palate and 19 had strabismus surgery to operate on the eye muscles for misaligned eyes. Our speech therapists were able to provide 212 speech and feeding therapy sessions during the week to help these children learn how to speak and eat better. In one week, 402 pairs of glasses were distributed! We continued our hearing aid program and were able to test and custom-fit 125 children with severe hearing loss with hearing aids. Many of these children were then able to see clearly for the first time or hear their parents' voices for the first time. In all, about 650 different children were helped during our week-long mission.

One such individual was a 9-year-old girl named Luz. Luz has a genetic disorder called Stickler Syndrome that causes loss of vision and hearing. Luz's mother is completely blind. Luz held her hand and guided her around the hospital complex and she held her white disability cane in the other. It was like her mom had two canes. They traveled together so well; you could see their connection and how familiar they were with each other’s movements. Luz came to see us with glasses that were crooked and cracked. We read the prescription which was a -8 and -10. Luz was seeing about 20/400 WITH the glasses. In other words, with the glasses she could only see clearly six inches away. Without any glasses on she could see clearly LESS THAN an inch away.

Her final prescription on vision testing was a -14 and a -16. With new glasses, she was able to see the 20/40 line. (Just three lines up from 20/20). She was able to pick out a pair of stylish frames that she liked and then with the help of generously donated funds HTCRM was able to pay to have custom lenses made for her that cost $90 (USD), an amount that she never would have been able to afford. When Luz put on the new glasses she grinned from ear to ear and looked outside. She then started dancing! While treating Luz our team became aware of her mother's similar condition and discovered she was without any hearing devices though almost completely deaf. Our team was able to fit her mother with hearing aids which helped her hear much better. It was an amazing experience to help this mother and daughter at the same time and forever change their lives.