Community Corner

Port Jeff Ortho's Charity to Treat Costly Facial Deformities

One little girl's plight inspires the formation of organization to help those with cleft palates too costly for other non-profits to treat.

A little girl named Saline was born ten years ago in Kenya with a facial deformity too costly to repair. She’s shunned by other children and even her own relatives because she looks and sounds different.

Many charities specifically dedicated to treating cleft palates in her country can’t fund her operation because that would leave so many other children with lesser deformities without the medical procedures needed to help them.

It’s a numbers game, according to a local orthodontist; help one severe case or a multitude of other children.

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This is the very reason why Setauket resident Leon Klempner, who is a partner at Coolsmiles Orthodontics in Port Jefferson, started The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids, to help children like Saline.

As a volunteer orthodontist for the cleft palate teams at clinics in and Stony Brook University Hospital, Klempner sees hundreds of patients each year with facial deformities.

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He’s also been on 12 missions to various parts of the world including Africa, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Vietnam and China to teach physicians and dentists how to treat cleft lips and palates.

“I have a passion for volunteering on overseas missions with groups that help children like Operation Smile and Smile Train,” said Klempner.

On many of those trips, he encounters children with such severe deformities that the cost to treat them would be too much for most charities to fund.

“Overseas missions are always bittersweet, because even though it's possible to help many children, many others must be turned away,” he said.

About six months ago, a director from Smile Train emailed him with Saline's tragic story. She had been born with a bilateral cleft palate and had been infected by a flesh eating bacteria only found in Africa.

Although about 90 percent of the children between the ages of one and four who are infected by the disease eventually die from it, Saline survived. She’s now ten years old.

“She is socially isolated because of it,” Klempner said. “The Smile Train director asked me if there was anything I could do.”

For any charity like the Smile Train to treat Saline they would have to forgo many other kids who have simpler deformities. A simple cleft lip repair costs hundreds of dollars per child. To treat Saline, the cost would be more than ten thousand dollars.

“You can see why somebody like Saline doesn’t get the care,” he said.

Originally he thought about bringing Saline to Stony Brook Hospital for surgery but that plan was complicated by the costs involved and the interventions necessary to allow Saline to travel to the United States.

That was when Klempner decided to launch a charity to help kids like Saline in their own countries, one child at a time.

“The children we are choosing are the ones who are not eligible for the other major charities,” he said. “This foundation is designed for those children.”

He called his new charity “The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids.”

For Saline, he’s already found a hospital in Nairobi that will do the surgery. The cost is between $15,000 and $20,000. The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids started raising money a few weeks ago and have taken in about $3,000 toward that goal.

Klempner said that 100 percent of the money raised goes to the children. There are no administrative costs. He’s already enlisted his daughter Amy Epstein, a marketing professional to design the charity's website. A close friend Anna Sharpe who is a graphic designer designed a logo.

Others involved on the board of The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids include Dr. Alex Dagum, chief of plastic surgery at Stony Brook University Hospital, and attorney Melissa Studin Young, the daughter of family friends from Setauket who volunteered her time to get the organization its non-profit status.

So far he’s relied mostly on friends and family but he’s always on the lookout for people to volunteer to do some fundraising.

Even with a successful orthodontic practice and working as a volunteer at two area hospitals, Klempner said that he still felt he had more to give.

“We’re here for a purpose,” he said. “And our purpose is to help other people.”

To donate to The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids or to help with fundraising please visit the website. To donate by check please mail to The Smile Rescue Fund for Kids, P.O. Box 766, Setauket, NY 11733. Make checks payable to: Smile Rescue Fund for Kids.


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