Positivity: Interplast’s ‘A Story of Healing’ Available Online
Who We Are:
Interplast — the first humanitarian organization to provide free reconstructive surgery for children with clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries — has provided 64,000 life-changing surgeries for those who have no other access to care. Working in underserved regions of 16 countries throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, Interplast teaches, empowers and partners with volunteers and overseas medical professionals so every child living in poverty has free access to the safest and highest-quality care — now and in the future. Interplast is committed to transforming as many lives as possible, allocating 90 percent of its budget to medical programs.
Our Mission:
Interplast’s mission is to provide free reconstructive surgery for people in developing nations, and to help improve health care worldwide. The organization’s goals are to establish, develop and maintain host-country medical care and educational programs with the following objectives:
- Provide direct patient care-reconstructive surgery and ancillary services to those with no other resources.
- Provide educational training and medical interchange.
- Assist host-country medical colleagues toward medical independence.
Their Academy Award-winning film is now available for free online:
In 1997, a Dewey-Obenchain film crew accompanied an Interplast volunteer surgical team to An Giang province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The filmmakers donated their services to document the team’s experiences and produce “A Story of Healing,†which earned the 1997 Academy Award® for best documentary, short subject. The 28-minute film is followed by a short epilogue (after the credits) which follows-up on two patients 16 months after their surgeries.
Ten years later, Interplast is proud to announce that “A Story of Healing,†has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical-No Derivatives license (by-nc-nd) and is available for free online.
