epa02476491 (12/16) Surgeons of the US non-profit organization Operation of Hope perform a cleft lip operation on nine-year-old Shamiso Chikata at the Children's Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe, 11 October 2010. Based in USA, the non-profit medical foundation Operation of Hope performs facial surgeries on poverty striken children around the world. Since 2006, at the Central Children's Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe, Operation of Hope doctors have conducted surgical operations on children born with cleft palates and lips. The foundation aims to restore self-esteem and the abilities to eat and articulate words by curing facial deformities. Caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, cleft lip is one of the most common physical birth defects across the world. Many families travel long distances for a three-hour operation done for free by Operation of Hope. EPA/AARON UFUMELI ***PLEASE REFER TO THE ADVISORY NOTICE (epa02476478) FOR COMPLETE FEATURE TEXT***
By specifically blocking certain nerves, a doctor can perform surgery on a patient without putting the patient to ‘sleep’.
No one knows the true origin of peripheral nerve blocks, but the concept was probably born in 1884 when Dr William Stewart Halsted first described the injection of drugs to nerve trunks.
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