On Friday 22 June, we were delighted to welcome Maria Moore, CEO of Operation Smile, to speak to MedSoc students and to formally launch Ipswich School’s partnership with the charity. We are honoured to be the only school in the UK to have been chosen to be involved with the charity as they look to expand their awareness in the UK.

Operation Smile is a charity that specialises in repairing cleft palates, as babies born with a cleft are nine times more likely to die before their first birthday, due to malnutrition and infections. The charity works in more than 30 countries where the healthcare system doesn’t have the resources to carry out the operations, establishing hospital partnerships and dedicated care centres in order to provide ongoing comprehensive care to patients and surgical expertise to the healthcare community. To make this work they have over 6,000 medical volunteers and have set up 27 cleft care centres in 18 countries.

Maria, a former dentist herself, talked about the history of the charity, how she became involved and the programmes she had been involved in throughout the world. She explained how in the future she hoped that the charity would not be needed as the healthcare professionals in the countries they visited would be fully trained to carry on their work.

As a partner school, our aim would be simple: raise awareness of the charity and money to help with the programme. The facts are clear – it is estimated every 3 minutes a child is born with a cleft condition, which is one in every 500 to 750 births. The severity varies but £15 pays for essential surgical equipment, £50 trains a surgeon and £150 can provide life-changing surgery for a child. The role of MedSoc will be to provide a platform to talk to younger students in the school and come up with money-raising ideas. In the future we hope our students will carry on the work of the charity at medical or dental schools, as well as involving aspiring nurses, child psychologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists and nutritionists, who are all needed to make the operation a success. Look out for more information next year.

Andrew Calver, Deputy Head of Sixth Form