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Sign in. So we realized the need to change the system of the hospital keeping in mind needs of our target patients. A continuous evaluation and feedback taken by our social workers helped us in this regard. Patients were admitted for surgery or follow-up on all days and at all times irrespective of their dates of admission or follow-up. Their minor ailments like skin infections, upper respiratory tract infections, diarrhoea, etc were treated before surgery, which could take several days.
They were kept in the hospital during this period. After surgery, patients were discharged from the hospital only after removal of stitches or after 5 days of palate surgery. It was difficult for patients to come back for stitch removal or to get treatment of any complications once they were back home. The average hospital stay was high for this reason but of great advantage to them.
Patients insisted on staying in the hospital till they were absolutely well, even if it meant loss of earnings for them, as they were aware of poor medical support back home and the hospital always respected their desires and needs. An area was designated for the attendants to cook their own food and and the hospital staff was always there to facilitate this. In hospital, social workers helped them at every step and also coordinated between them and hospital staff and kept patients well informed.
Attendants were provided space-big halls to stay together, where they could meet each other and understand various things about hospital and treatment from one other. Most patients come with the camp registration file and are investigated and sent for further evaluation by the paediatrician.
A thorough anthropometric evaluation is done for each patient. Anaesthetists and surgeons also evaluate each patient before surgery. All the patients were discharged together on a particular day. Some common instructions were given to them by the hospital staff. They were also seen individually by the surgeon. This happy ending of their hospital stay was celebrated in a small function and all patients were given the Smile Train backpacks and some gifts and were encouraged to go to school.
Needy patients also received money to meet their travel expenses. The Smile Train also started a special grant for helping these patients with their conveyance expenses by providing clothes, toys, shoes, etc for the children and also for helping them with their educational needs, food, milk or shelter.
A special pilot project was started in G S Memorial Hospital to provide some vocational training to the attendants of the patients while they were in hospital so that they could work on it and add to their family income.
A good number of people took advantage of this programme. The average age of the patients at surgery may be a good indicator of backlog in that part of the country.
Although in ideal situations the average age at surgery should have been below 1 year, the average age of patients in our hospital was 6. It slowly went up to 7. There were two reasons for it. First, the ongoing programme instilled confidence in people and even older patients who had settled with their deformities decided to take another chance for their surgery.
Secondly, somewhere in , the Smile Train decided to permit free surgeries to patients upto the age of 40 years. Interestingly, average age at surgery in girls was much lower 6. This was probably because of the greater concern of parents towards the girl child as she would more commonly be the target of ridicule and it will be difficult for parents to marry them to a suitable match [ Figure 4 ].
Photographs and clinical details of all the patients are meticulously maintained and are utilized for follow-up and research. Even before starting this work with the Smile Train, we realized the tremendous potential of starting research to find the cause for clefting.
We knew it requires a long research and we expected a big number of patients to be available. The research involves evaluation of each patient, making of pedigree in familial cases, evaluation of maternal nutrition, biochemical analysis, extraction of DNA from the blood samples of patients, parents and relatives and their analyses by various methodologies and markers.
The results so far have been very exciting and few papers have already been published and others are in the pipeline. It selected one congenital anomaly- clefts of the lip and palate and decided to do everything for it. The Smile Train did not believe in taking missionary surgeons to the place of need to operate upon cleft children. Instead, it believed in improving the infrastructure and training so that local hospitals and doctors could take care of their own patients.
The Smile Train gives greatest emphasis on the safety and quality of surgery. It runs its programme through more than partner hospitals in 76 countries of the world where more than doctors treat cleft patients. More than patients have been treated in these hospitals so far.
The most successful Smile Train programmes run in India. Out of patients, have been treated in India www. Because of its policies and functioning, the Smile Train made a tremendous impact on the lives of cleft patients. This has become the greatest example in modern times, of how a single mission can transform lives of hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from one condition.
This is also one of the finest examples of social entrepreneurship that works globally with highest efficiency and a minimum number of staff. This has been a ray of hope for those who never thought that happiness will ever come back to their lives. The number of cases that turned up for surgery surprised even most senior plastic surgeons. Registration in some of the camps organized by our hospital went up more than in a day! Nobody believed that there were so many waiting patients for surgery.
For the first time patients and parents had faith and hope that their defects can be fixed- free of charge. Suddenly, they wanted to live once again and they came up for surgery. The Smile train started functioning in India since the year with Mr. Learn More About Smile Train. Latest Stories. United States. Behind our partnership with Cuddles for Clefts. Changing the world one smile — and one bottle — at a time. More Stories. Fill your inbox with smiles! She said that they verbally communicated their intentions.
Smile Train has not been forthcoming with providing to AIP any written internal memos or documents which contain a record of the donors' wishes. In June Fuchs told AIP that the "two large unusual and exceptional gifts in FY '01…were restricted for future use, but which were recorded as current income for accounting purposes. In other words, the restrictions on donations described in Fuchs's email are time restrictions--not purpose restrictions, such as ones that would limit their use to only overhead expenses.
At the time of publication, AIP did not have a copy of Smile Train's fiscal audit to see if it reported whether these funds were purpose or time restricted. Fuchs declined to answer this and other questions as of the time of publication. Mullaney's compensation, benefits and all travel expenses are paid for from the temporary restricted funds set up by the founding board members to cover overhead and fundraising non program expenses.
All else aside, if Mullaney's compensation were lower, then more of the temporarily restricted funds could be available for other expenses.
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