Jan. 17 – “A smile costs nothing, but it is worth a lot. It enriches those who receive it and who gives it.” The Italian Navy has landed in Africa with the Operation Smile Italy Onlus Foundation, the Francesca Rava NPH Italy Onlus Foundation and the Nurse Corps of the Italian Red Cross Volunteers. The Cavour aircraft carrier and tanker Etna of the Cavour Naval Group stopped in Kenya – January 10-15 – for the beginning of the second phase of the Naval project “The Country System in Motion.” The team of volunteer doctors and nurses from Operation Smile, supported by the medical staff on board and the Nurse Corps Volunteers, carried out 21 controls and 18 surgeries and identified three more complex cases to be further treated in Cape Town or in Italy. The goal of the project “A Sea of Smiles,” kicked off in May 2013, is to help children and adults with cleft lip and palate deformities and malformations of the head and neck. Patients are welcomed aboard the aircraft carrier Cavour, along with their family members, and can be operated free of charge in operating rooms made available to the mission, with the invaluable help of the medical staff. The surgical patients were discharged in good condition and will be subject to a post-operation control in a hospital in Mombasa by the end of the week.
