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Ammon News - By Khetam Malkawi | The Jordan Times

AMMAN — Some 40 children in Jordan living with physical deformities will undergo reconstructive surgeries that were not previously accessible to them in the region, thanks to a team of American doctors currently visiting the Kingdom.

Children with congenital facial and hand deformities — in addition to other complicated cases — will undergo surgeries performed by a group of doctors who came to Jordan on a mission through the Children of War Foundation.

Led by plastic surgeon Andrew Ordon, host of the US talk “The Doctors”, the mission was launched on Sunday in collaboration with the King Hussein Medical Centre (KHMC), which was selected as the venue for the surgeries.

“I’ve partnered with my colleagues — plastic surgeons from Los Angeles… to come to Jordan through Children of War,” Ordon said in an interview with The Jordan Times late Saturday.

“They are great surgeons, and also great humanitarians and this is what the Children of War Foundation is all about. We are here to help where we can help, take on cases we feel we can help make better,” he noted.

Ordon added that he will be focusing on nasal reconstructions, but “may also help other doctors with bigger cases that are more complicated”.

According to plastic surgeon at the KHMC Khaldoon Haddadin, having this mission, including doctors with subspecialties, in Jordan is an added value to the medical centre that receives rare cases of deformities and victims of war from across the region.

“The Children of War Foundation wanted to come to Jordan to perform a variety of plastic and orthopaedic therapy procedures, so they contacted us back in January looking for a place to conduct the operations,” Haddadin told The Jordan Times.

He explained that the KHMC is receiving a lot of cases in need of complicated reconstructive surgery, and these will be handed to the mission.

“We tend to do most of these procedures here, but having international medical figures in subspecialties and certain areas such as treating congenital hand deformities is a great opportunity for our patients,” Haddadin noted.

He added that 80 cases were prepared to be seen by the Children of War medical mission and “they will conduct operations for 30 to 40 cases in the coming few days”.

“These surgeons treat hundreds of such cases per year,” he explained.

One of the operations will take one full day, according to physician Andre Panossian, director of the facial paralysis centre and co-director of the vascular anomalies centre at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Panossian said the mission spent its first day reviewing the cases and selected the most complicated ones.

However, according to Panossian, although the name of the foundation is Children of War, it does not mean that only children who are survivors of conflict are targeted in the organisation’s mission.

“Not only victims of war; it is war against cancer [and] war against birth deformities,” he explained.

Changing children’s lives positively and helping them feel satisfied is one of the main goals of the mission, Panossian added.

He also noted that this is his “first mission to the region”, as before this “we used to bring children to Los Angeles to conduct the needed surgeries for them”.

Based in the US, the Children of War Foundation’s mission is to provide reconstructive surgical care to children regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. Their operations are funded through endowments and donations.