Photograpgh courtesy of Dr. Sandy Ellenberg
Compassionate Service: Willow Glen resident Dr. Sandy Ellenberg, left, accompanies one of his patients suffering from cleft lip and her mother, during his Rotaplast International trip to Barquisimeto, Venezuela, last May. The nonprofit organization this year will send 12 teams to cities in foreign countries as well as in the U.S. that have a local Rotary Club to sponsor them.
WG couple change lives in Venezuela
Rotaplast trip was sponsored by San Jose Rotary Club
By Kate Carter
A long-time Willow Glen couple recently returned from a volunteer trip to South America, and in so doing changed their lives as well as those they helped.
Dr. Sandy Ellenberg and his wife, Maureen, spent 12 days in May in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, helping and performing surgery on people with cleft lips and palates, as part of a team with Rotaplast International.
Rotaplast International is a nonprofit organization, founded by the San Francisco Rotary Club 11 years ago, that seeks to "provide free reconstructive surgery to indigent children worldwide, together with education and prevention of birth defects," according to its mission statement. The organization this year will send 12 teams to cities in foreign countries as well as in the U.S. that have a local Rotary Club to sponsor them.
The May trip to Barquisimeto was sponsored by the San Jose Rotary Club. The club raised $40,000, the Ellenberg's raised another $10,000, and the Barquisimeto Rotary Clubs raised $20,000 to bring the 30 medical professionals and Rotary Club members to the third-largest city in Venezuela, with a population of about one million.
"It's harder for them to raise the money than for us," Sandy Ellenberg said.
This was Ellenberg's second Rotaplast trip. The retired plastic surgeon, who had a private practice until a few years ago, has been the San Jose Rotary's member liaison with the international organization for about five years, visiting groups to raise awareness and contributions to Rotaplast's efforts.
Ellenberg decided to go on a trip to better explain what it does. Last year he was part of a Rotaplast team that went to Cumana, Venezuela and helped fix the cleft palates and lips of about 150 children. He returned from the trip with a new passion for the work, and the San Jose Rotary Club decided to sponsor a trip of its own after hearing about Ellenberg's experience.
Ellenberg encouraged Maureen, also a Rotary Club member, to come on the trip as the medical records' keeper and see for herself how powerful a difference just a few people could make to change the direction of young lives.
Cleft lips and palates are physical abnormalities caused when the parts of a fetus' head don't grow together between the sixth and eighth weeks of gestation, Ellenberg explained. They can be caused by a variety of factors, including heredity, toxic substances such as cigarette smoke in the pregnant mother's environment, an accident or serious illness suffered by the mother during pregnancy, a folic acid deficiency in the mother's diet and poor nourishment under difficult living conditions, he said.
The incidence of cleft lips and palates is three to five times higher in South America than in the U.S., Ellenberg said. In some South American cultures, people with cleft lips and palates aren't allowed to attend school because of the distraction they would be to other students. Children with the deformities can be rejected entirely by their parents because of the shame they can bring to their families.
"They're not educated and they're rejected," Ellenberg said of the children. "Many grow up to become prostitutes or criminals. We're changing their lives."
In addition to the embarrassment and social problems they suffer, people with cleft palates, especially, struggle with health problems such as frequent ear infections, pneumonia, malnourishment and speech problems. The Ellenbergs said that most of the patients the Rotaplast team saw were poor and lived in jungle villages surrounding the city--they do not have medical insurance and cannot afford to pay for the surgery.
"If we hadn't gone down there and done the surgeries, nobody would've done them," Ellenberg said. "You could've been there a month and not done everyone," Maureen added.
Ellenberg was in charge of the medical crew for the trip and chose the rest of his crew--two other plastic surgeons, two pediatricians, four anesthesiologists, eight nurses, a geneticist, speech therapists, two dentists and two dental assistants--as well as the nonmedical staff--San Jose Rotary Club members--who helped with translations and other tasks.
The group's days on the trip began at 5:45 a.m., when they awoke, ate breakfast and waited for a bus to take them from their lodging in unused officers' quarters on a military base to the hospital 30 miles away. Often, though, the bus was late or didn't arrive at all, and the team took taxis to make it to the hospital in time for the opening of clinic at 7:30 a.m.
Patients came by bus, donkey or through the aid of local Rotarians for miles to the hospital. There, they were checked by team members to determine if they were healthy enough for the surgery and how much of a priority of a case they were. Some couldn't receive the surgery because of heart or kidney diseases or other illnesses. The Ellenbergs said families would be incredibly disappointed to lose the chance to have the surgery; the only consolation was that each child received a stuffed animal from the team.
The plastic surgeons performed about 13 surgeries a day and completed more than 100 by the end of the trip, Ellenberg said. Pediatricians checked up on patients who had already had the surgery and had stayed overnight in the hospital. Dentists inserted metal plates into the mouths of those who couldn't receive the cleft palate surgery and pulled decayed teeth. Speech therapists helped children, and even some adults, who had always had a speech impediment or never spoken at all, learn to use their newly shaped mouths.
Geneticists took blood samples from the patients and tried to determine their genetic histories, in an effort to better understand the causes of cleft lips and palates, and to better prevent them. Several weeks ago, Rotaplast International announced that University of California at San Francisco researchers, using Rotaplast blood samples, had discovered a gene that prevents people from digesting folic acid.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
