A team of surgeons from Interplast Australia and New Zealand is currently performing general plastic and reconstructive surgical services that is life changing to their patients, at Vaiola Hospital, assisted by local doctors. 

The team returned to Tonga on 25 May, after three years of COVID-19 border closures. They will leave on 3 June.

The Interplast International Program Director, Jess Hill, and Head of Program Operations, Shiv Nair, told Matangi Tonga today, that the team had been doing an outstanding job on the patients.

"Our tag line is ‘repairing bodies, rebuilding lives’," Ms Hill said.

Mr Nair said they support countries that do not have the skill or workforce, and help by building their capacity to conduct those surgeries.

They conduct life-changing surgery for conditions including congenital disorders, tumours, as well as microsurgery.

Ms. Hill said they tend to focus on rebuilding forms for people who are deformed or who have a condition which they acquired through trauma that needs to be repaired.

"So we have seen a lot of children with conditons they are born with, from hand deformity, hands that includes fingers diffused together, among others. Also from cases that caused by trauma, someone who had been in road accident and caused injury to legs, or someone burnt and left with scars," she said.

Rotary NGO

Interplast is a small Non-Government Organization (NGO) based in Australia. It was established in 1983 by the Rotary in partnership with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Later in 1983, Interplast  was introduced in Tonga and has been an annual repetition until the COVID-19 border closures.

Interplast is funded by the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Rotary. The project has reached seven Pacific Island countries and several others in Asia. 

Their aim is to take surgical and clinical procedures to countries with little to no access to it. They have performed a total of 27,000 surgeries in the Pacific and Asia region.

Meanwhile, patients were advised in Tonga, that those who require an assessment for plastic and reconstructive surgical conditions (including cleft lip and palate, scarring from burns, hand injuries and tumours), are urged to contact the surgical unit at the hospital to make an appointment at the regular outpatients clinic.