Magaly is the mother of David, age five, a Smile Train patient in Quito, Ecuador. She shared with us her son’s journey to cleft care and what Smile Train has meant for her entire family.
Rosa and her husband were living and working on a finca (ranch) in rural Colombia, taking care of a local landowner’s cows, when their first son Oscar was unexpectedly born with a cleft lip.
Lourdes was born in Yaruqui, Ecuador with a cleft lip and a rare condition in which skin was formed over her nostrils. Lourdes received six reconstructive surgeries when she was young, but the treatments stopped prematurely when her parents’ insurance company stopped covering her care.
Wendy was 17, single, and scared. She had just had a baby with a cleft, and any help seemed far, far away from her family's ranch in the remote Andes highlands. But Smile Train was there.