DAY 1-Screening Day for surgery and speech therapy! THE NUMBER OF BABIES UNDER 12 MONTHS WAS UNBELIEVABLE!  MOST WERE UNDER 5! Last year there were many more older children!  THERE WERE 60 NEW PATIENTS TO BE SCREENED FOR SURGERY! Too many for Dr. Williams to do in his 2 1/2 weeks here, so he scheduled about 40 and then added a mission back here in October to take care of the other 20!  He does not want to send them home without hope!  They get a surgery date even if it is for 3 months away!

Dr. Williams, Dr. Marchand (anesthesiologist), with clinical coordinator/nurse Flor, screened the 60 children today with the help of hospital nurses, Rotarians, Red Cross volunteers and speech pathologists!  Susan and I screened 20 children for speech. About 4 of the patients from last year will come back this week and next for speech therapy, who had palate repairs last year. A few others need speech therapy but live to far to stay the whole week or two, so we saw them yesterday for therapy and they will return for 1-4 visits over the next 2 weeks. 

3 of the children and normal speech and voice quality and don't need any speech therapy as a result of having their palates repaired here last year!  Great palate repairs by Dr. Williams!

Today, Susan and I begin the task of screening 14 more children from last year who had speech therapy!  Hopefully a few more of the 14 who had surgery last July also stop by for speech screening.  We have children starting therapy this morning at 8 AM in addition to the speech screenings- going to be a busy day!

We took MANY, MANY more pictures but my computer loads them so slowly and our internet access is fleeting at times, this is what I could load more quickly!
More to come....

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