For children that have disabilities, life is very hard.
They're a lot of times rejected by their by their society, by their community or even their own family.
And it's just a very lonely existence,
and your future prospects are to continue to be rejected and to continue to be by yourself.
Being born with a disability, means being invisible.
In many ways children are the same around the world:
if you have something that makes you look a little special, you're going to get picked on.
You are going to see children with clubfoot that will never go to school,
because in order to go to school they
need to walk,
and their mother their father can't really take them to school.
You're going to see someone that has no opportunity of ever being part of the society.
In many of these villages to where they may be a four or five hour walk from the highway,
there's not accessible health care, even for basic things like medication or helping with child birth.
And then when you get into more things like disabilities, there's really very little hope.
I think the biggest thing is if you see
these kids you'll realize that
if this was my child, I'd want something done.
CURE is an international NGO, Christian,
committed to treat children with
disabilities in different countries
mainly in Africa.
CURE serves everybody.
Any child with a physical disability
regardless of their socioeconomic status
is welcome to walk under doors and be
treated.
We are serving people from every religion.
We don't make any distinction
between people that we are serving.
Most of these are congenital deformities they
were born this way with some kind of condition.
In other cases they just
happened while they're growing up they
fell out of a tree or something else
happens some kind of trauma or emergency.
In many of the communities that we work
both in Africa but also here in the Philippines,
it's hard to get medical
care and medical treatment. So often
they'll go to a traditional healer and
things won't heal right.
Burn contractures are really what's happened
when the the burn is not treated at all.
We see a lot of these in the developing
world because there are many open fires
and the children will fall into the fire
for hot water will spill on them
and they really don't get adequate medical
care.
Healing means the world means everything.
It means that you exist that
you are no longer invisible.
For a lot of them also it's the the ability to go to
school to have a normal job to work like
anyone else. And to just be open and not
be hidden away.
When children and their mothers in particular
come to our hospitals or
clinics
will realize that the physical
disability might actually be the easiest
disability to deal with.
There is a more complicated disability which is spiritual, emotional, psychological
and that disability is something only God
can deal with.
If you know God at all, all through scripture and just in your own heart God's about healing.
You know when to
think about restoring the broken,
I love that CURE's doing it in a physical way
and a spiritual way, emotionally way, in every way.
CURE's taking care the whole person.
That's what's so awesome about this
hospital is you know it's more than just
an orthopedic hospital it's more than
just being able to heal them physically
but it shared the love of Jesus and heal
them spiritually
and that's what's happening every day.
For me this is the very essence that we can share with them
is that following Jesus it's a choice
and you have to do it by yourself and I
think most of not only the patients but
also the staff who are working with us
are discovering that even though they
are Muslims we appreciate them.
We are taking care of them.
Here in Niger our staff is about sixty percent Muslim forty percent Christian.
And we treat people
with love and with respect.
That alone is a witness of the love of Christ here in a country that's
like ninety nine percent Muslim.
CURE is not a new idea.
It's not like wow we'd have this new
idea that no one's done before. This
is Jesus's hands and feet of Jesus.
This is how he spoke.
We're called to help
those that we can. No we won't cure
everybody. But we are called to take care
of the ones we encounter,
and those we can help we should help.
Jocy came to the hospital with her aunt
and her mom.
Josie came with a severe burn contractures that caused her not to
be able to go to school and cause her to
not be able to go out and play with kids.
One thing I started way
back when I went into missions was
realizing that we're gonna cause these
children pain and I don't want them just
to focus on the pain. What we do is
whenever a child comes in I let them
take their choice of which color sucker
they want.
They're not a ton of calories you're not gonna ruin our life with them but they're fun.
It's just a little treat to remind them that we really do care about them
and we want to give them something good.
The entire staff of the Tebow CURE hospital
is showing the love of Jesus to the patients.
and I believe the first step to that is being able to
welcome them in the hospital and love on them.
Maria is a great young lady. She came to
CURE with her family and her smile just
kind of brightens up the room.
Unfortunately the first thing though you
don't notice is that great smile you
notice to her big bow legs.
Maria has a condition called rickets.
It's about a four to six month process for each leg.
So we finished her right leg over the summer.
She was treated with what's called external fixation so she still has our external frames on the first leg.
Seeing children with some of these congenital problems
and problems that need long-term care multiple surgeries over months or years,
the nice thing about it is how close you become these families.
They have so many appointments and they get to know staff and
and watching them even
grow up. The opportunity for me to see
patients I operated on seven eight years
ago now it has been a wonderful
experience and to see these kids grow
and be able to kind of see them through
their entire childhood it's been great.
So Benson, Joselle and
Jocy.
Hi I'm Marlene. And I'm Hope Kim and
we are the CURE kids coordinators here in the Philippines.
This is awkward.
So when a kid first comes into the
hospital we meet them and we start
immediately just getting to know them
right off the bat.
So our jobs as CURE kids coordinators are to welcome the kids
into the hospital and basically share
their story with the world.
So they come in with the condition and we tell what that condition is
and we tell their stories because every kid comes in with unique story.
Okay so sister played with the fire
and put it next to the pillow close to a mosquito net that triggered the whole thing.
Yeah, those mosquito nets are brutal.
I remember asking her mom Judith if she was getting bullied.
She said yeah actually do they call her coang,
which is like a crab like, 
her arms looked like this and I
said "she cried" and she goes "no she would just say no I'm having surgery."
[music]
My name is Jorge Santana.
I handle mostly logistics.
We see these hospitals our family
so it gives us the trust that we
need to, you know,
be part of each other's life.
We think that doing whatever we
have to do to make sure that our
patients get to feel the love of Jesus
we think that's part of all of our job
descriptions, be part of the family, 
be part of the spiritual ministry.
Healing is not just the physical healing
but emotional and spiritual healing as well.
We want them to know that Jesus
Christ loves them, they are precious each
one of them is precious and valuable in
God's sight and we want to let them know
that God loves them.
Our Hospital regular operating hours are
from around 7:00 or 8:00 until 5:00, but
our working day doesn't end at 5:00 o'clock.
The patient's a lot of them come
from really far 10, 12 ,15 hour drive away
so they leave their homes at 4:00 or
5:00 in the morning and travel all day
and then arrive here between 8:00 to 12:00 at night
for the surgery the following day.
So these are two patients that are coming for surgery.
One is sick,
so he'll have to be rescheduled and the other one's gonna be operated on tomorrow.
Most children here don't cry. They're sort of taught not to cry.
So it was pretty remarkable
seeing Nafiou crying and just he seemed overwhelmed.
When our patients show up
here at the hospital we don't really
know them. Usually we don't know where they're
coming from. We don't speak the same
language often. So when Nafiou arrived with
to his grandmother we weren't able to
find out that much about him right away
but we couldn't wait to hear more during
the rest of their stay at CURE.
sometime aguacate, avocado.
Santana brings us in all kinds of stuff.
He'll bring us in fruit, avocados, you name it.
You'll usually have breakfast on the OR days thanks to Dr. Santana.
Good morning. Hey, how are you doing buddy?
Ruggles, how are you?
With a long term patient like Maria
you develop not only
gaining that patient's trust but the family trust.
It's a scary thing what these kids have to go through
and the language barrier it doesn't help.
But with Maria is so easy to just
be able to touch her.
So you kind of just want to be on that same eye level with them and showing them comfort.
That helps out a lot.
Niger is a very big country.
So we have patients that come from as far as 1500, 2000 kilometers away.
And for many of the patients it's their first time to ever come to Niamey, everything is new.
It's the first time coming to a hospital.
It's a little bit overwhelming. It might be a little bit scary.
So every morning we have a visit with the nurses who were
there during the night, the nurses who
will cover the day and we're going just
patient to patient. It's a surgical visit
so it's straight to the point,
no big dissertation. We check about the
casts about the wounds,
and we see the patients who are supposed to be operated the same day.
So we see all together the follow-up and the new patients.
It's a completely different world. When they come to CURE even more.
Many of them when they see a white doctor for the first
time they are scared.
but then they are also told, many of them are told
that if they don't obey their parents
the white man will come and will eat them.
So sometime I'm really telling them
or asking her "tell them I'm not going to eat him."
Nafiou came from a village that's about
500 kilometers away from the Niamey.
For Nafiou and for children that have disabilities
but especially a cleft lip something
that's on the face that's very visible,
life is very hard.
They're seen as unclean, as impure.
A lot of times rejected by their community or even their own family.
We've heard of people that are not able to
drink from the same cup as anyone else
in their family or or eat from the same
bowl because their lip is considered
dirty or impure.
You can imagine that would be
a scary experience, all these new things
and meeting all these new people and not
knowing what's gonna happen or what
they're gonna do to you.
He seemed overwhelmed.
But he was here. He still came and that is a reflection of
his courage and the courage of all of our patients and their families.
For the moms the dads or the caregivers,
we have seen that the time when their
kids are going down for surgery,
something really happens to their
emotions right there. It's like the fear
escalates.
And those are times when tears are just
there. The tears are just coming out.
So it's like a perfect opportunity for us
to be able to be there to come alongside
to be a comfort to be an encouragement.
One of the favorite thing that we do in the ward is times of praise and worship.
It's amazing because while surgery is going on there's a praise and worship going on in the wards.
External fixation is a big part of my orthopedic practice a deformity surgeon.
It certainly looks intimidating when you see a patient that's an external fixator
with the pins and bars or screws coming out of their leg attached to things and
however it can be a great technique to treat children with deformities.
When Maria completed her first surgery, the
bones were realigned and took about four
to six months to heal. Once the bones are
healed it's a very simple process then
to take off the external frames.
We use anesthesia because it would cause some pain, but it only takes a few minutes to
remove the screws put on bandages and take the child to the recovery room.
We value the way we are going to treat
the people the families as soon as they
enter the hospital, and they recognize
that very quickly.
For those who are coming from far away often it's a kind of discovery.
Some of our patients, Muslims, they have never been in touch with Christians.
For our team, it is very precious to have examples of Christians,
African, Swiss, American, who are
displaying these kind of values.
I can tell you most of the nurses, the Muslim
nurses, they have really experienced in
their own life, they know that there is
a special power while we pray the name
of Jesus and most of our staff they have experienced that.
Jocy had a lot of burns along the flexor
surfaces of our arms and she needed
early skin grafting and didn't receive
it and then as the scar matures
it starts to shorten.
No orthopedic or
plastic surgeon can ever make it look
normal again. It's just not possible.
The skin is a full thickness burn it is it has been destroyed.
So what we want to do is try to restore the function.
It's a long procedure and it takes
multiple hours and it's very tedious work.
So I was really grateful that Dr.
Jun and Dr. Badjun, my partners,
they each came in to help.
Surgery is is where I live and what I am
so this is part of the way I worship is just doing
what God called me to do.
When God was looking at us and doing the surgery,
complex very long,
I think God, God would have smiled and said:
"Just about time."
because she has been suffering long enough.
"About time."
Good morning.
When she was crying and she was waking up
she was telling me instead of
referring to me as doctor she was just
saying "Pastor have mercy on me I'm just
a small kid."
and I just said "I'm not a pastor.
I'm just a doctor."
And then I realized this kids are looking at us too, not just their parents.
It reminded me that our actions
and our reactions really matter, not just
our words.
We tell people that everyone's a member their spiritual staff they really are.
they they love and our children. Our nursing staff is very in tune with our patients.
We spend time equipping our staff and help them to understand the importance of their role
that they're not merely a nurse but
they're part of the team.
People always kid about orthopaedic
rounds because basically if the pain is
controlled they're mobilizing their
breathing,
life is good for orthopedics.
We don't mess with their bellies we
don't have all this trouble
but it's like five minutes of seeing the kids and
then you come up and spend ten minutes
15 minutes of pure paperwork which is
misery.
So it's good to the bad and
that's what life is as an orthopod.
Now she's doing well I think
she was in so much pain
last night, but she she's doing well now.
And we actually connected her to a
VAC which is a vacuum assisted closure.
We just wanted to, so that to ensure the
her graft would actually stay and
to keep the swelling as well. So our plan
for her on Friday we're gonna change her
dressing and probably Saturday she'd be
ready to go home.
And we usually want to see her for probably after a couple of weeks.
People think it's a cute little thing
that I do like
draw pictures with the kids you know, but
it's so much more than that.
The kids come and they're so afraid and afraid of people.
So then come and they get to do artwork
and they're starting to see this side of
themselves that they didn't even know was there.
And I love being able to draw
that out in them
and help them build confidence, let them see that they have this beauty
within themselves and it can come out through their artwork
and getting them to that point where they
see that beauty within themselves it's,
it's a beautiful thing.
When a child gets healed physically, when
their legs are straightened
and their lips are repaired, they look
wonderful, they look beautiful,
but on the inside they're still so afraid and
scared to go out into the world.
So when they get to spend time one-on-one and
see that they're so important
and they're so loved they start to build up
confidence and start to believe "yes I am important."
They change while they're here.
The time they spend in the hospital the time they spend with our staff
with the spiritual ministry, with the nursing staff, everyone,
they open up they start acting
more like what we think kids should act like.
She's like "can I eat?"
I said "yeah let me talk to your nurses."
Although the first surgery is complicated
and the patients usually stay in the
hospital for a few to several days,
removal of external fixation as very
simple procedure. It's usually outpatient
and they can even go home the same day.
After the patients receive their surgery
they usually spend a day or two in the
ward and then they're discharged and
either they go home but for those who
come from far away they go to the Case de Passage,
to the patient guesthouse
and stay until they can go home for good.
I remember the Bible saying that youths
they can soar like eagles and I said
from now on she can soar like eagles she
can do what she wants
because the Lord transformed her from a very incapable this,
to a very mobile eagle.
Maria is now about three months
post-surgery on our left leg. she's here
just for a routine check.
At this point we're just going to encourage her to start walking
and that will help her bones heal faster.
So all those what and we'll see her
probably back in a month or two.
Ok there is difference, because now everybody loves him.
I'm very happy.
Yes.
Jocy, she really desires, she really was
"I want to ride a bike, that's my dream."
[bell sounds]
For a lot of families I think it's
treatment at CURE not only provides the treatment for
their specific ailment or
their physical disability, but it gives them hope.
The hospital offers them a kind of open
space to taste something different.
And actually, I think most of the Muslims
that are coming and really experiencing
the freedom, the grace, the openness of
the Christian environment they blossom.
What cure does, or what's been doing is
really helping out improve children's
lives, and not just even the children's
lives I think that the lives of the
family and the caretakers, the parents
and everyone involved with that child.
For me CURE is hope.
I see a lot of children and I look in their eyes and I don't see hope.
So that's how I look at CURE.
I go to CURE every day knowing that we
are bringing God's hope to this people,
not just because they are healed
physically but because they are being
spiritually fed as well.
The work that we're doing is not only
transforming lives but also saving lives
and, you know, in Nafiou's case it's it's
just amazing to see the the healing and
the transformation that happened in him.
As I receive this healing from the Lord I can be who God wants me to be.
And for Jocy I can ride a bike, I can go to school, I can do it.
Just, amazing is the
word because you know, I thought
what if I hadn't taken the call and I'd stay back in my private practice
and I would have missed all this.
