Let the Healing Begin

Our Mission

To provide free surgical and dental services to poor and underprivileged children and young adults in various countries throughout the underdeveloped world, as well as facilitate the transfer of education, knowledge and recent innovations to the local medical communities.

Medical Missions for Children, Inc.,(MMFC) is a Massachusetts based non-profit organization that dispatches teams of volunteer surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, nurses, speech pathologists, and nutritionists to the most remote and underprivileged communities in the developing world. The focus of MMFC’s missions is the surgical care of cleft lip and palate deformities, head and neck tumors, severe burn injuries, microtia(absence of the outer ear), and dental disease. As well, we work to advance medical education and clinical training, and to expand hospital care facilities, in every country we visit.

Every year, MMFC completes twenty to twenty-five medical missions at multiple sites in eleven different countries. Volunteer teams vary from five and fifteen members, and over the course of one to two weeks, care is provided to between 40 and 300 children and families.

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Since 1991, MMFC has launched 520 volunteer missions worldwide, providing surgical, dental, rehabilitative, and nutritional care to over 175,000 children and young adults in fifteen countries. Our singular goal is to provide free care to children with severe congenital facial deformities, tumors of the face and neck, burn injures, dental disease, and malnutrition. The children we are privileged to serve live in the most impoverished corners of the world, and without the commitment of our volunteers, and the generosity of our benefactors, these children would continue to live without any hope of receiving the surgical, dental, and medical care they so desperately need.

Lack of essential hospital infrastructure in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ukraine necessitated a build-out of operating room facilities prior to the initiation of charity missions in each of these countries. In Tanzania and Rwanda, MMFC installed anesthesia machines, operating room tables and overhead lighting, vital surgical equipment, and state-of-the-art operating room and post-op recovery room monitors at hospitals in Dar es Salaam and Gitwe, respectively. MMFC similarly outfitted three hospitals in Ukraine, with a modern microvascular surgical laboratory assembled at a regional burn center in the city of L’viv. These donations, along with the training of local physicians by MMFC volunteer surgeons and anesthesia staff, allow these medical facilities to extend their scope of care 52 weeks a year.

By way of partnership with the Maharlika Charity Foundation, MMFC has been able to reach destitute communities throughout the Philippines—on the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte, Palawan, and at multiple sites in Mindanao. At two separate sites in the Philippines—Angeles City and Davao City—MMFC and Maharlika, working hand in hand, are developing cleft care centers that will provide surgical, rehabilitative, and/or nutritional care twelve months a year.

Members of the Board

 

Gil Arie, JD, LL.B, LL.M
Partner
Foley Hoag LLP

 

Wallace Bellamy, DMD
Vice Chair, California Dental Association
Fellow, American College of Dentists
Founder, Fountain Plaza Family Dental

 

Charles Badaoui, DMD. RPh
MMFC Treasurer,
Founder, Copley Dental Associates,
Assistant Clinical Professor,
Tufts University Dental School

 

Rafael Barrera, MD
NSLIJ Medical Director,
SICU Northwell Health

 

 

Shelagh Cofer, MD
Division Chair, Pediatric Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery,
Mayo Clinic.

 

Shadi Daher, DMD, FICD, FAAOMS
MMFC President, Clinical Assistant Professor,
Boston University School of Dental Medicine,
Boston Medical Center.

 

Jagdish Dhingra, MD
Director & Partner, ENT Specialists, Inc.
Professor, Tufts School of Medicine

 

Marc B. Ehrenpreis, MD
Director of Pediatric Anesthesiology,
New York – Presbyterian/Queens
Clinical Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology,
Department of Anesthesiology,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University

 

Claudia Gilman, J.D.
Founder, Novara Global Consulting
Previous General Council, Boston Scientific

 

Frank Alfred Nyori, MD
Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care
CCBRT Hospital
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

 

Drew Patterson, MD, PhD
Lawson Professor and
Executive Vice Chair of Anesthesiology
University of Nebraska Medical Center

 

Dennis Snyder, MD, FACS
MMFC Chairman
ENT Specialists, Inc
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Tufts Medical Center / Otolaryngology

 

Ben Talei, MD
Director, Beverly Hills Center for Plastic Surgery
Advisory Chair, LA County Medical Association

 

Zahrah Taufique, MD
Pediatric Otolaryngologist
NYU Langone Otolaryngology Associates

 

Pacifico M. Tuason, MD
Instructor in Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School,
Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine,
Massachusetts General Hospital

Robert F. Ward, MD
Professor of Otolaryngology,
New York University Medical College
Director & Partner, ENT Specialists, Inc

Staff

MMFC is managed by their Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is a body of elected appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of the organization.

Executive Staff

Frank ODonnell, JD MPA
Executive Director
fodonnell@mmfc.org

Kiki Polemenakos
Mission Coordinator
missions@mmfc.org

Materials Management

Hermes Castillo
Materials Mgmt
materials@mmfc.org

 

Professional Services

Nada J. Rizkallah, C.P.A.
NJR Services
n.rizkallah@hotmail.com

Roberta Anslow
Cape Cod Office
Graphic and Web Design
Charity Golf Tournament Director
Philippine Mission
roberta.anslow@gmail.com
robertaanslow.com