ReSurge International supports 10 permanent Surgical Outreach Programs in Africa: Ghana, and Zambia; in Asia: Bangladesh, India (2) and Nepal; and in Latin America: Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru (2)—a concerted global humanitarian effort to uplift the lives of impoverished children everywhere. Here are the people who direct our year-round centers. ReSurge also has long-time partners in Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

In Africa:

Dr. Pius Agbenorku
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Kumasi, Ghana

As one of only six plastic surgeons in the country, Dr. Pius Agbenorku helps the medically underserved in the city of Kumasi and in the Upper Volta region of the country.

Pius is the founder of the plastic and burns surgery unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi. He also serves as the unit’s senior lecturer and consultant plastic surgeon. So that he could provide care to those who needed his services most, Pius also helped found the Global Evangelical Mission Hospital in Apromase-Ashanti, on the outskirts of Kumasi. And several times a year, he travels a full day to the cluster of villages in the Upper Volta region, where he was raised, to perform surgeries. By taking the Surgical Outreach Program “on the road,” he is able to care for greater numbers of children in even more remote regions of Ghana.

Pius received his medical degree from the Lvov State Medical Institute in the Ukraine, completed his postgraduate general and plastic surgery training at the State Railway Hospital in Wroclaw, and obtained his doctorate in philosophy in medical sciences from the Wroclaw Medical Academy.

Dr. Goran Jovic
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Lusaka, Zambia

Dr. Goran Jovic is the only plastic surgeon in Zambia—a country of more than 12.6 million people where 64 percent of the citizens live below the poverty level. With ReSurge’s support, he has transformed the lives of nearly 2,000 people with clefts and disabling burns since 1999.

In addition to performing surgeries in Lusaka, Goran flies to remote areas of Zambia through ‘FLYSPEC,’ an organization founded by Dr. John Jellis, an orthopedic surgeon who has been flying his private plane to treat underserved patients for more than 20 years. Goran and John make about three or four trips a month, working in government and mission hospitals in remote areas all over Zambia. In addition to treating patients, the surgeons strive to help local doctors and surgeons in rural areas advance their medical skills and services.

Goran is a native of Serbia, grew up in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia and completed his training in plastic surgery in Yugoslavia and Croatia. Goran and his wife, Rada, left Europe in the early 1990s and worked in Kuala Lumpur and Zimbabwe before settling in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1993. He is currently on staff at two hospitals: the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), a public facility that is also Zambia’s main teaching hospital; and the Zambian Italian Orthopedic Hospital (ZIOH), a private hospital that provides only orthopedic and reconstructive plastic surgical care.

In Asia:

Dr. Yogi Aeron
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Dehradun, India

For nearly 40 years, Dr. Yogi Aeron has cared for the people of Dehradun in Uttaranchal, in the mountains east of Delhi. Much has changed in those three decades. In the early days, his reconstructive surgery practice was in his home; his wife sterilized the surgical instruments in a portable autoclave set up on a kerosene stove.

Yogi graduated from King George’s Medical College in 1967. He obtained a master’s degree in plastic and reconstructive surgery in 1971 from Prince of Wales Medical College and Hospital. He has worked in government hospitals in Lucknow and Dehradun, and the Prince of Wales Medical College and Hospital. Yogi refreshed his cleft craft from Dr. R. Millard in Miami in 1982. From 2000 until 2006, Yogi again visited and trained with various plastic surgeons in the United States.

Yogi brings his decades of experience and specialized training to his partnership with ReSurge. Today, he serves as the head of the plastic surgery department at Dehradun’s Disha Hospital. As in most developing countries, burns comprise a large part of his practice, along with cleft repairs. He is committed to the region’s poor: he founded Helping Hand to provide medical care to the poor and needy and, now, through ReSurge he is able to extend his altruistic reach.

The remote foothills of the Himalayas, where wildlife and humanity coexist, are hours from Dehradun, but Yogi’s skills are in demand among the isolated mountain denizens. Some of his accomplishments include doing the world’s largest series of reconstruction of bear bite cases (12) and designing 10 new reconstructive flaps.

Dr. Shafquat Hussain Khundkar
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Dhaka, Bangladesh

Since 1990, Dr. Khundkar has worked with ReSurge surgical teams in Bangladesh. In 2000, ReSurge established a Surgical Outreach Program in Dhaka so that Shafquat and his team of colleagues and medical residents could provide care to poor Bangladeshi patients year-round. He completed his medical training at Dhaka Medical College and received intensive general surgery training at Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1988, he received a World Health Organization fellowship to train in plastic surgery in Melbourne, Australia.

The profound impact that plastic surgery could have on a person’s life inspired him to return to Bangladesh and devote his time to charitable work, alongside his private practice. He is one of only about 15 plastic surgeons in Bangladesh, a country of almost 160 million people.

Shafquat is head of the plastic and reconstructive surgery department at Dhaka Medical College and founded the country’s first plastic surgery residency program—which has already doubled the number of plastic surgeons in Bangladesh. He is a medical advisor with the Acid Survivors Foundation, which is helping to alleviate the suffering of acid burn victims. Shafquat is currently serving as president of the Society of Surgeons of Bangladesh as well as president of the Bangladeshi Plastic Surgical Society and is a life member of the Burn Association.

Dr. Shankar Man Rai
Director Emeritus, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dr. Shankar Man Rai, a world-renowned expert at repairing clefts and burn injuries, has provided more than 12,000 free surgeries for impoverished children. He has also helped thousands of children in rural Nepal heal their speech impediments through the speech therapy camps he founded.

In 1999, Shankar established the first ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program. With the success of his outreach pilot program, he began meeting with ReSurge partners from other developing countries, sharing his experience and model. Now, more than 80 percent of all ReSurge surgeries are performed by developing world surgeons like Shankar at 11 centers in nine countries. He also created the first medical residency program in Nepal’s history in the specialty of plastic reconstructive surgery, resulting in a new generation of surgeons to treat the poor of his country.

Shankar was born in rural Nepal, about 100 miles from the nearest major road, to a poor farming family. He was the first in his family to reach his level of education and professionalism. Soon after his general surgery training, he observed ReSurge volunteer doctors performing a cleft lip surgery in Kathmandu and decided that he wanted to do the same. After three years of plastic surgery training in the United States, he returned to Nepal to dedicate his knowledge and skill to helping others.

In 2004, the American Medical Association honored Shankar with its Nathan R. Davis Award in International Medicine and Public Health for his devotion and skill; he was the first doctor from a developing country to receive this prize. In 2005, he received a World of Children award for his remarkable service. In April 2009, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, honored Dr. Rai with his Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award.

Dr. Hien Thi Nguyen
ReSurge Partner
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Dr. Hien Nguyen has worked with ReSurge since 1990. Since then, Hien has helped organize countless ReSurge medical team visits to remote provinces of Vietnam. Hien graduated from the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Medical University in 1986 and is now the chief of the anesthesia department at the Trieu An Hospital in HCMC. Prior to her current post, Hien has been the chief of the anesthesia department at the Children’s Hospital #1 and at Nhan Dan Gia Dinh Hosptial. Specializing in pediatric anesthesiology, Hien has dedicated nearly 21 years joining ReSurge’s medical teams in serving the poor people of her country.

Dr. Puneet Pasricha
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Jalandhar, India

Plastic surgeon Dr. Puneet Pasricha is the chief plastic surgeon and director of the Pasricha Hospital, a multi-specialty hospital in Jalandhar. Puneet, born and raised in Punjab, received his general surgery training at the Dayanand Medical College in Ludhiana and his plastic surgery training at the Government Medical College in Patiala. He received advanced plastic surgery training in France, Taiwan and the United States. He has performed more than 10,000 surgeries in the last 20 years and is deeply interested in the welfare of poor patients with cleft lips, cleft palates and post-burn and post-traumatic deformities.

Dr. Chandini Perera
ReSurge Partner
Colombo, Sri Lanka

Dr. Chandini Perera, who is one of a few plastic surgeons in Sri Lanka, directs the country’s only burn care facility in Colombo. Many of Chandini’s patients are the victims of domestic abuse who received their burns as an act of violence or from self-mutilation. There has been a tragic rise of acid burns and self-inflicted burns among women in recent years in Sri Lanka. Others have suffered tragic accidents; and all have nowhere else to turn for their disabling burns. Raising awareness about disabling burns (from violence or accidents) throughout Sri Lanka is Chandini’s priority. “There has been a lack of knowledge about burns here. Burn patients are neglected and subject to much misery; the resulting deformities are severe and crippling,” said Chandini. When she began at the National Hospital seven years ago, her first task was to educate medical professionals about burn care, while building a core team to staff the country’s first burn unit.

Chandini conducts seminars for doctors and more than 300 nurses and 50 physical therapists are trained in burn care annually. ReSurge sends visiting educators to Sri Lanka to help her provide this advanced medical training. ReSurge also sent her and one of her physical therapists to Nicaragua. There, Chandini collaborated with surgeons while her colleague learned advanced therapy techniques from the Nicaraguans.

Chandini graduated from the North Colombo Teaching Hospital in 1989, and obtained her first fellowship in surgery in 1995. In 1997, she obtained her second fellowship at the Burns Plastic, Reconstructive and Maxillofacial Unit, Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney. She trained in general plastics, burns and ear surgery and breast reconstruction from 1997 to 2000. In 2000, she returned to Sri Lanka and was appointed to her current position.

In Latin America:

Dr. Jorge de la Cruz Flores
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Piura, Peru

Dr. de la Cruz Flores began working with ReSurge in 1984 as a surgical volunteer on team trips to his region. In 2000, the ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program in Piura was established to serve more rural areas of Peru near the coast and the surrounding hillsides; Jorge became its director. Jorge collaborates closely with the Red Cross in Sullana and other independent social welfare workers to refer patients to the ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program. He and his team mostly operate at the Ministry of Health Hospital in Sullana, Peru (about an hour from Piura) because of that hospital’s greater access to resources for underserved patients. Occasionally, he performs some surgeries at local private hospitals or clinics in Piura, or in his private offices.

Jorge studied medicine at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. He was trained in general surgery at the Hospital Edgardo Rebagliatti Martins IPSS in Lima, and then in plastic surgery at the Hospital Cayetano Heredia in Piura, Peru, with further specialization at Hospital Guillermo Almenara Irigoyen in Lima.

Dr. Jorge Palacios
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Guayaquil, Ecuador

In Ecuador, where great numbers of children live in poverty, prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Jorge Palacios has dedicated his life to serving such children and adults. For more than 30 years, Jorge has helped impoverished people who have clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries receive the life-changing medical care they need.

As founding director of the ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program in Guayaquil, Jorge and his team treat patients in the city and also travel regularly by bus to more rural areas of Ecuador to care for other patients. He also is the founder of a local charity called ‘Fundacion Rostros Felices’ (Happy Faces Foundation, which Jorge calls the “daughter of ReSurge”). His charity provides reconstructive plastic surgery for local children with clefts. Jorge (in just the last 17 years) has performed or provided surgery for more than 6,000 impoverished children and adults.

Jorge is the chief surgeon of the plastic surgery department in Guayaquil’s Leon Becerra Children’s Hospital and of Luis Vernaza Hospital’s burn unit, which he founded. Moreover, he started Ecuador’s first plastic surgery residency program to increase the pool of local plastic surgeons devoted to helping the poor in their own communities. Now these young men and women are joining him to care for those in critical need of reconstructive surgery in Ecuador—providing new hope, today and for the future.

Jorge graduated with a degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Guayaquil. He was a general surgery resident and chief resident in Guayaquil’s Hospital del Instituto Ecuatoriano de Bienestar Social. Jorge specialized in plastic surgery at the Ramos Mejia Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also studied at Stanford University for a one-year plastic surgery fellowship in 1977.

Dr. Mario Pérez Reyes
Director, ReSurge’s Surgical Outreach Program
Managua, Nicaragua

Since 1996, Dr. Mario Perez Reyes has worked with ReSurge. In 2005, he became director of its Surgical Outreach Program in Managua, which focuses on correcting clefts and disabling burns in underserved rural areas. Mario is also the director of the APROQUEN Burn Unit, an organization that helps Nicaraguan children suffering from debilitating burns, and works at the Hospital Metropolitano Vivian Pellas, which boasts a new, world-class burn unit—one of the best burn units in Central America.

A native of León, Nicaragua, Mario attended medical school at the National University of León and interned at University Hospital of León. He completed his training in general surgery and plastic and reconstructive surgery under the supervision and evaluation of a program with the University of Wisconsin; he also has received additional training in microsurgery and hand surgery.

Dr. Percy Rossell Perry
Director, ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program
Lima, Peru

Dr. Rossell Perry, who has volunteered with ReSurge since 1994, has been director of the ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program in Lima since 2002. In addition to operating in Lima, Percy and his team often travel to poorer areas of Peru to perform surgeries in local hospitals and clinics, as well as screen patients. This kind of travel, undertaken by many of the Surgical Outreach Programs, creates “mobile” clinics that can reach patients and communities effectively year-round. Percy and his team also work with Armonizar (“The Harmony Foundation”) in order to provide comprehensive care to patients treated through the ReSurge Surgical Outreach Program; this local Peruvian foundation provides speech therapy, education and counseling to children who have had corrective surgeries for cleft palate defects so that they can reintegrate into schools and social life.

Percy studied medicine in Lima’s San Marcos Major National University. He developed his specialty in plastic surgery at the Kirschbaum Institute and the Peruvian Army Hospital, with additional training in cancer reconstructive surgery at the National Oncology Institute in Lima. He has been a member of the academic faculty at San Marcos Major National University where he also received a master’s degree. In 2004, Percy was a fellow at Emory University in Atlanta and M.D. Anderson in Houston; he received advanced plastic surgery training in craniofacial, microsurgery and cleft surgery, as well as many other reconstructive techniques.