Facing the World (FTW) has been active internationally since 2002, and in Vietnam since 2008. The children’s medical Foundation offers hope to children born with severe facial deformities.
We have pioneered a bold new approach to sustainable healthcare, with self-run centers of excellence in the countries where we work. These provide children born with facial deformities with the surgery they need. The model can then be replicated nationally and internationally.
We are a children’s medical Foundation, run by volunteers who care passionately about the cause. This includes all doctors nationally and internationally, the voluntary CEO (Trustee) and all other professionals. Major corporations and Foundations support our unique approach, and have generously donated financial funding, services and medical technology.
Beginnings – why Vietnam?
Our journey began with a focus on bringing children needing complex facial surgeries to the UK from countries where access to the required specialist healthcare is limited. Each year, one to two children were treated in the UK by FTW partner hospitals, at a cost ranging from £50,000 to £1 million. Following an invitation by a US charity to visit Vietnam, FTW identified there a compelling need. The occurrence of birth defects in Vietnam is estimated to be 10 times higher than in neighboring countries, thought to be partly due to the legacy of Agent Orange. In 2008 we began running medical missions to Vietnam. A multidisciplinary team of FTW medics operated jointly with their Vietnamese counterparts on complex surgical cases.
A sustainable solution
Since then, we have developed a clear, sustainable strategy which will lead to tens of thousands of children, initially in Vietnam and hopefully beyond, receiving the treatment they need for horrifically disfiguring birth defects. We have moved away from the model of treating one to two children a year at astronomical cost to a position where we facilitate operations on thousands of children with craniofacial conditions. We now crucially provide continuous training for local teams at partner hospitals. This teaching platform is replicable not only in Vietnam but eventually in other countries and scalable in the medical field where talent has proven difficult to scale in the past.
Teach a man to fish
The key to this viable and sustainable solution is the teach-a-man-to-fish approach. We award international training fellowships to Vietnamese medics, and we have already sent 170 to top medical institutions in the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA and Australia to observe and learn new techniques and approaches. A further 200 fellowships are currently in the planning over the next five years. These fellowships are supplemented by in-country missions where complex surgeries are carried out by coordinated teams of Vietnamese doctors and international doctors involved in the fellowship program.
Telemedicine
Partnering with a telemedicine platform is critical to a scalable and replicable approach. It enables the development of an outreach program in Vietnam, along with a two-way mentoring educational system with international partners. We also work with our Vietnamese partners to identify other game-changing technology needs, which are then met through donations.
Structure
Facing the World works closely with the Ministry of Health to best deliver what specifically fits the needs of the Vietnamese healthcare sector, thus enabling optimal medical practice to be delivered in the field of facial deformities. The Foundation works with all relevant sectors: state, military and private and has partnered with hospitals active in these respective sectors. These include Viet Duc University Hospital & K National Cancer Hospital (State); 108 Military Central Hospital (Military) and Hong Ngoc General Hospital (Private), allowing our reach to extend throughout the country via their networks of approximately 100 further hospitals and clinics.
108 Center for Craniofacial and Plastic Surgery - the first of its kind in Southeast Asia and a blueprint for the future.
The first Center for Craniofacial and Plastic Surgery in Vietnam opened in December 2018 after three years of discussions with members of the medical establishment, the government, and FTW. These helped to develop a blueprint, with a clear and measurable five-to-eight-year plan including all aspects of specialist medicine under a fully multidisciplinary approach.
So far 32 medics from the new Center have taken part in the fellowship program and two telemedicine platforms from Teladoc have been donated to the hospital. These are the first steps in this new modular approach with a clear start and end point. It can now be replicated elsewhere in the Foundation’s ever-expanding international network. After eight years, the Center will be able to reach and treat 60% of all children born in Vietnam with significant facial deformities.
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