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Nyack Plastic Surgeon to
Help Children in Colombia

By Jane Lerner
The Journal News
(Original publication: September 29, 2004)

Children in a poor region of northern Colombia have probably already started their journey that will end next month when they meet a Nyack plastic surgeon in an operating room.

Laura Sudarsky is part of a team of doctors and nurses heading to Santa Marta to operate on children who have facial deformities, burns and other injuries. "An hour of surgery changes the lives of these kids," Sudarsky said.

She has made more than 20 trips to the world's poorest places to bring medical care to people — often youngsters — who would not have it otherwise.
Sudarsky and a medical team visited the same hospital in Santa Marta in 2001.

"Families walk for days to get there," said Kate Lowing, a nurse in Sudarsky's office who went on the 2001 trip and will go again Oct. 15.

With the help of money raised by local groups, including the Pearl River Rotary, the medical team bought four used anesthesia machines for $120 each and had them refurbished.

The machines, which would cost about $10,000 each new, have already been shipped to Colombia, where they will become part of the hospital's permanent equipment.

Pearl River resident Devin Upton, a specialist in biomedical equipment, will go on the trip and be available to make sure the machines work.

The donation of the machines will enable the medical team, which includes six surgeons, to operate on as many as 200 children during the week it's there, Sudarsky said.

Many of the children have already been treated by Sudarsky and other American doctors for conditions such as burns or cleft palates. They also see many patients with machete injuries.

"Some of the burn children we first saw when they were 2 or 3 and now they are 12 or 13," she said.

The group will take with them supplies donated by local hospitals.

Nyack Hospital allowed the team to use its machines to sterilize equipment. Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern donated supplies, including sutures, that were part of open surgical packs but had never been used.

Local residents donated non-medical, but equally important, items, including clothes and toys.

"For many of the children, it will be the first toy they have ever had," Lowing said.
The group has already mailed 100 boxes of supplies and good totaling more than 2,000 pounds. Money donated by local groups helped to pay the cost of shipping the items.

The group will work with Healing the Children's Connecticut-based chapter. The organization has provided medical treatment to about 75,000 patients across the world since 1979.

In 2003, the organization conducted 11 medical missions to Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kenya, Nicaragua and Russia, plus site visits to the Dominican Republic and Vietnam.

The living conditions endured by their patients are horrific, said Lowing, who has gone on numerous medical missions around the world.

"They are poor beyond anything we can image," she said.