Three more major surgical missions are lined up for conduct this year by separate outside groups that have been engaged with Bohol capitol in unconditional love and concern for the poor sick.

The free operations target to cure or correct cataract and other eye defects, heart ailments, and harelip/cleft lip/palate and other facial deformities.

All these are again principally sponsored by the provincial government under Gov. Edgar Chatto, according to Philippine Gift of Life (PGL) Pres/CEO Francisca Baluyot who is the governor’s consultant on surgical-medical missions.   

The eye mission will be done by a Tzu Chi Foundation surgical team at the Bohol Cultural Center on June 11-12.

Surgeons led by Heart Foundation of the Philippines (HFP) chairman Dr. Avenilo Aventura are to perform the heart operation in July or likely within the week of the Bohol Day, July 22.

The harelip, cleft lip/palate mission will be conducted by the US-based Joseph Paul Clawson Foundation (JPCF) on September 17-22, during which it will also give eyeglasses.

JPCF founder Dr. Joseph Paul Clawson, who had himself gone to Bohol in a past mission, is a PGL consultant.

The venues of the heart and harelip operations are yet to be arranged, although these were done before by the same groups at the Borja Family Hospital in Tagbilaran City.

The PGL already has 52 heart patients on its “waiting list,” including a boy and a girl who are both two-month old and an 80-year-old man as of listing.

But the PGL is still accepting potential mission beneficiaries because the final number to “go under knife” will be known only after the final screening of the patients.

The eye, heart and harelip surgeries are all facilitated by the PGL, which has also been supported by the Tagbilaran City government under Mayor John Geesnell Yap II and Vice Mayor Jose Antonio Veloso.

The PGL and Tzu Chi – Bohol Office, the latter headed by Joven Uy, are coordinating on the free cataract operation.

Bohol’s first big surgical mission in 2017 was performed last month, on the governor’s birthday, by the US-based group of Dr. Renato Rivera, another consistent humanitarian partner of the province.  

It has been Chatto’s tradition to conduct a surgical mission on his birthday, truly celebrating life—the value of others’ lives—every February 21. (Zjam Lyka Rasonabe Arigo)