The Vietnam-Cuba Friendship Hospital in Hanoi and Operation Smile Vietnam organisation will give free medical checks and surgery to children suffer from cleft lips and cleft palates from April 15-18.

Correction surgery for cleft lips will be conducted for children as young as 6 months, while those for cleft palates require patients to be at least 18 months old.

Operation Smile Vietnam is part of a global alliance of Operation Smile Foundations and Resource Chapters dedicated to providing free treatment to children and adults suffering from cleft lips and cleft palates.

Operation Smile’s first medical mission to Vietnam took place in 1989. Two years later, a volunteer network of Vietnamese medical professionals established Operation Smile Vietnam.

Since its first medical mission, Operation Smile has provided thousands of free medical procedures to children and young adults in Vietnam, and has provided additional training to Vietnamese medical professionals.-VNA