For more than a decade, the Facing Futures Foundation has continued its mission of helping underprivileged children with facial deformities. Each year, they travel to Vietnam to operate on children who cannot get the care they need for their facial deformities. More than a dozen team members from Jacksonville were joined by other medical professionals from Denver, Boston, Chicago and Pennsylvania. Barry Steinberg, M.D., D.D.S., a University of Florida associate professor of surgery at Shands Jacksonville and the foundation’s founder was in attendance.
“We have a dedicated team that continues to give their time and money to help these people. This year, we made some logistical changes making it the most successful trip yet,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg’s team screened 117 patients and performed 55 surgeries while in Vietnam. The surgeons handled cases dealing with eye deformities, cleft lips and palates, hairy nevus and severe jaw abnormalities.
Le, now 7, underwent surgery during a previous visit from the foundation to remove a tumor resting around the vessels in her neck. It took her family several years to raise the $15 needed to travel to Ho Chi Minh City to see the foundation’s surgeons visiting the area. Jerry Popham, M.D., oculoplastic surgeon in Denver operated on Le’s right eye, which rolled back into her head. Popham surgically adjusted her eyelid and had her fitted for a special artificial eye, much like a contact lens.
For many of these children, they are not only on the path to physical healing but social healing too, forever changing their lives and that of their families and friends.
“Le is not able to attend school because she is considered cursed and ugly. With this procedure and special lens, she will look better and hopefully be able to live a better life,” Popham said.