As we near the end of 2023, we at Operation Childlife have so much to reflect on and be proud of over the past 12 months, all of it made possible by the generosity, of our supporters, partners, volunteers, and friends, be it with their donations, their time, or their support of the wonderful work our volunteers carry out on every single Operation Childlife Mission.

During 2023 Operation Childlife has completed nine clinical missions across our five children’s hospital partners in Tanzania, Jordan, Mongolia and Vietnam, the latter two in partnership with the Christina Noble Charitable Foundation.  We applaud the 27 volunteers who gave a week or more of their time, transforming, and in some cases saving, the lives of the children we treat.   Reports are still coming in from the very recent trip to Vietnam, but we know that more than 185 children have benefited directly from Operation Childlife clinical missions this year, many of them with complex cases and all of them in desperate need of our help.

An integral part of Operation Childlife missions is the training of local medical personnel, so the impact of our work goes far beyond the individual cases we treat.  Throughout the year training was provided in clinical settings and also in more formal classroom/workshop formats, including the first OCL delivery of the Paediatric Acute Surgical Support (PASS) training programme, which a faculty of Operation Childlife volunteers have been accredited to deliver.  The PASS programme aims to save the lives of acutely ill children by enhancing the initial assessment, recognition, and early appropriate management of a life-threatening surgical emergency.