Thirty-six medical volunteers from a non-profit organization in the United States Monday began to carry out free operations on poor children suffering congenital cleft lips or palates in north China's Hebei Province.

More than 150 children will receive the surgical treatment in the following two weeks at the No. 3 Hospital of the top Hebei Medical University (HMU) in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang, which will cover the surgery costs itself.

Twenty local surgeons and nurses are also taking part in the charity, organized by Operation Sunrise, a San Francisco-based organization founded in 1996 to provide free treatment to children troubled with face deformities in developing countries.

Statistics show one and a half of every thousand newborn babies in Hebei suffer cleft lips and palates, which cause pronunciation and deglutition problems. Some, especially those in rural areas, have no chance of receiving treatments because of lack of money.

Guo Yinghua, a 12-year-old girl from a village in Zhangjiakou, a city in the northwestern part of Hebei, said after the operation that she would be eager to tell her deceased foster father, if he could hear her, "his daughter has become as beautiful as other girls."

The girl suffered cleft lips and was abandoned by her parents just after her birth.

Guy Englemann, a surgeon with Operation Sunrise, said, "The children with inborn cleft lips and palates are really unfortunate. I am just doing what I can to help them."

(Xinhua News Agency May 17, 2005)