Nurse volunteers to see the difference operations make to families

Morag Cromey Hawke (R) Executive Director and Marilyn Parro, a nurse who volunteers with Operation Smile UAE, sorting through donations for upcoming missions abroad.

ABU DHABI // Nurse Marilyn Parro knows exactly what corrective surgery means to children born with cleft conditions - and their parents.

The 44-year-old, who works as a recovery room nurse at Al Ain Hospital, has seen the results first-hand. She has been on six missions abroad in the last year after volunteering through Operation Smile UAE, a children's charity that recruits medical volunteers and funds free surgery and aftercare to those affected by cleft lips and palates.

"It's my passion. I have been volunteering since college. As you grow older, you are looking for something else that's better and higher," said Ms Parro, from the Philippines.

"It's an honour to do something different, something that not everybody can do, something to give service.

"I'm learning as well and not only helping."

On her trips abroad she looks after patients, normally children, in a recovery room immediately after they have undergone surgery to repair clefts.

Some of her patients have suffered by being ostracised because of their facial deformity, she said, and the operation makes an enormous difference to their lives.

"Everything will be changed. It's difficult if you are different from others," she said.

The delight and gratitude of the parents is also plain to see.

"One patient in India, when I called the mother to recovery to get her child, she was crying. She had food with her and she tried to give it to us and I said, 'it's OK, it's for you'. She was so grateful," added Ms Parro.

The UAE resident of 12 years has been on missions to Jordan, China twice, India, Rwanda and, last September, her hometown of Naga City, where the mission took place at a hospital she worked at 28 years ago.

"It was very special. It's nice to be able to go back and help people where you come from," she said.

Ms Parro said she comes across children with cleft lips and palates through her work as a nurse in Abu Dhabi and would like to see the charity offer operations in the UAE.

"It's very distressing for the parents. There are so many complications for them, especially if the parents are not educated in taking care of them," said Ms Parro. Her next medical mission is to Morocco at the end of this month.

Operation Smile UAE hopes to offer surgery to a group of suitable people in the UAE in February next year, in conjunction with an as-yet-unnamed hospital.