Global Smile Foundation (GSF) will lead a multidisciplinary surgical program to Guayaquil, Ecuador in September 2026, providing free, comprehensive cleft lip and palate care to children from underserved communities across the region. Our mission is to ensure that children in Ecuador receive the highest quality of surgical and multidisciplinary care, regardless of their family's ability to pay.
Our volunteer team of plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists, speech-language pathologists, dentists, and nutritionists will provide reconstructive surgery alongside speech therapy, dental, and nutritional evaluations, at no cost to the families we serve. Many of these children live in remote or low resource areas where specialized cleft care is otherwise inaccessible.
Beyond surgery week, GSF invests in the long-term strength of Ecuador's healthcare system. We train local medical staff, transfer surgical technique, and strengthen our long-standing hospital partnership so that high quality cleft care continues to grow long after our team departs. This model reflects GSF's broader approach: building sustainable, in-country capacity rather than providing one-time aid.
This grant would also help cover the travel expenses of our Executive Director, Dr. Usama Hamdan, who leads the surgical team on this mission. By offsetting his transportation costs, this funding would free up other mission resources to be redirected toward additional patient care needs, such as surgical supplies, local staff training, and post-operative follow-up.
Children born with cleft lip and palate in Ecuador, particularly those from low income and underserved communities in and around Guayaquil, will benefit directly from this project. These families cannot afford or access specialized reconstructive surgery, speech therapy, dental care, or nutritional support, services essential to a child's ability to eat, speak, and be accepted socially.
Cleft lip and palate is one of the most common birth defects worldwide, yet without timely, comprehensive treatment it can lead to lifelong physical, developmental, and psychosocial challenges, including malnutrition, speech impairment, and social stigma. In Ecuador, access to multidisciplinary cleft care remains limited outside major private centers, leaving many children untreated or receiving incomplete care.
We focus on this population because they represent some of the most medically underserved children in the region, and because comprehensive, multidisciplinary cleft care, delivered at no cost, can transform a child's life trajectory. Through our long-standing presence in Ecuador, GSF now serves approximately half of the country's entire cleft-affected population. Each mission provides over 150 surgical procedures, making this one of the largest and most impactful cleft care programs operating in the country today.
This mission is expected to directly benefit hundreds of children through free reconstructive surgery and comprehensive multidisciplinary care, improving their ability to eat, speak, breathe, and integrate socially, outcomes that extend well beyond the surgery itself into their long term health, education, and quality of life.
Beyond the immediate clinical impact, this trip strengthens Ecuador's local healthcare capacity. Our team works alongside local surgeons, nurses, and allied health professionals, sharing surgical technique and multidisciplinary protocols that remain in place long after we leave. These learnings are reinforced through Global Smile Foundation's broader education platform, including our Comprehensive Cleft Care Workshop (CCCW), which brings together healthcare professionals from around the world to continue refining surgical technique and best practices in cleft care.
Every mission also generates clinical data and outcomes that inform our ongoing research, contributing to the global evidence base on best practices in cleft care. This ensures that what we learn in Guayaquil doesn't stay in Guayaquil, it strengthens our approach for every future mission and every future child we treat, in Ecuador and beyond.
Global Smile Foundation team was able to provide 154 corrective procedures for 80 underserved Ecuadorian patients born with cleft lip and/or palate. This surgical care was complemented by comprehensive cleft services, including dental and orthodontic care, oral health education, speech and feeding assessments, and psychosocial support.
