Interplast was the first international humanitarian organization to provide free reconstructive plastic surgery for the poor in developing countries.

Beginnings

Interplast was founded in 1969 under the leadership of plastic surgeon Dr. Donald R. Laub, who at the time was chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California.

Laub was inspired by Antonio, a 13-year-old boy who had come to Stanford from his home in Mexicali, Mexico to receive surgery to repair his cleft lip and palate. Antonio was being raised by his grandmother, living apart from his parents and six siblings. He had never attended school, and rarely had opportunities for social interactions with other children. Father James Poggi, a local priest, arranged for Antonio to come to California. Dr. Robert Chase, working with then-plastic surgery residents Dr. Leo Keoshian and Laub, performed the surgeries to repair Antonio's lip and palate.

Upon Antonio's return to Mexico, he started school and performed very well. Excited about Antonio's success and the meaningful—and almost instantaneous—changes in his life, Chase and Laub traveled to Mexicali, where they were introduced to a seemingly endless lineup of children with disabling deformities, many of which were surgically correctable.

Laub became determined to find a means of helping these children, and set about establishing a program designed to provide surgeries regularly in a charity hospital in Mexicali.

This act of charity was revolutionary for plastic surgery and set in motion the establishment of the first organization to provide free reconstructive surgery in developing countries—Interplast.

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Expansion

Laub realized that many children outside of Mexico needed reconstructive plastic surgery as well. He began organizing surgical volunteer trips to other parts of Latin America, and eventually to Asia and Africa as well. Volunteer teams of medical professionals began traveling to sites across the developing world and performing surgeries to change the lives of thousands of children.

Interplast also began bringing patients, whose cases were not appropriate for surgery in their native lands, to the United States for surgery. They stayed in the homes of host families, and were operated on by surgical teams who donated their time in hospitals and clinics that donated their equipment and space.

Interplast’s Medical Scholars Program also was developed to bring foreign doctors and other medical professionals to the United States for multi-month training fellowships.

Over time, Interplast refined its mission to better empower people around the world. While Interplast continued to provide direct patient care by sending medical volunteers overseas, the practice of bringing patients to the United States was eventually phased out as medical infrastructures in developing countries improved.

Training doctors in developing countries became a much more sustainable and cost-effective way to affect the lives of thousands of children. Although teaching was always integrated in surgical team trips, training doctors in developing countries became Interplast's focus while still providing direct patient care through visiting teams of medical volunteers.

Interplast thus began the Visiting Educator Program, which enables medical experts to travel to developing countries and provide knowledge, training and experience to developing world doctors and nurses who then help their fellow citizens.

Around the world, other groups formed, inspired by Laub’s vision. Although many share the name Interplast, such as Interplast Australia, there is no formal connection. Interplast in the United States is an entirely separate legal entity and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, with its own distinct board of directors and management; it has no authority over, accountability for or responsibility for the Interplasts in other countries.

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Empowerment

Interplast builds local medical capacity, creating long-term, year-round surgical care where none previously existed.

In the late 1990s, the Interplast board and staff realized that the only viable long-term solution to providing year-round access to reconstructive surgical care was by building the capacity of local medical staff.

A visiting volunteer surgical team can address approximately 75 patients during a two-week visit. However, many factors can prevent a child from receiving care on a team trip. For example, if a patient has a cold, s/he will not be able to have anesthesia and thus cannot have surgery. Other challenges for families include transport, agricultural cycles, getting off of work and the demands of child care; these can all have a negative impact on prospective patients getting access to surgery in a two-week window.

In 1999, Interplast established the incubator model in Nepal, which rapidly grew into the model for Interplast’s current Surgical Outreach Centers. Dr. Shankar Man Rai, the organization’s partner in Nepal, assembled a local team of medical professionals to provide free surgical care, speech therapy and other medical services year-round in Kathmandu and rural Nepal. In its first three years, the Surgical Outreach Center in Nepal treated more than 3,000 patients, more than 10 times the number than could have been treated through volunteer direct service trips to that location. It demonstrated that Interplast could dramatically expand access by directing more resources and support to locally managed programs.

Interplast now supports 12 permanent Surgical Outreach Centers in nine countries, where 2,400 surgeries are performed per year. This model of empowerment, sustainability and self-sufficiency creates long-term surgical care where none previously existed.

Now, more than 60 percent of Interplast surgeries are performed by our partners in the developing world.

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