For most of her young life, Julia seemed condemned to home imprisonment: Disfigured with a cleft lip and a cleft palate, crippled by polio, she essentially hid in her family's house. To get around, she crawled on her knees.
That was before the Philippines resident was helped by a remarkable group of medical philanthropists based in Provo, the Deseret International Foundation.The foundation facilitated corrective surgery on her face and mouth and provided her with a leg brace. Today, her cleft lip and palate have been operated on, and she walks upright.
Her family jokes that the only thing they don't like about the change is that they don't see as much of her anymore: Julia goes outside, living the life of a typical teenager.
Deseret International Foundation is a private, nonprofit charity offering medical assistance in many Third World countries. Most of its work helps children. Referrals come from all over, and Deseret International helps without regard to religion, sex or race.
Organized largely by Utahns, many of them former missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the foundation is privately supported.
Deseret International Foundation calls on local health specialists wherever possible and helps residents of the Philippines, India, Thailand, China, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Tonga and Indonesia.
In some countries, its projects have been going for years, while in others - such as China and Indonesia - the effort is still in the get-acquainted stage.
In 1992, Deseret International facilitated 3,000 major surgeries around the world, in addition to dental programs and hospices, estimates Dr. E. William Jackson, the foundation president.
Deseret International Foundation focuses on medical problems that are relatively simple to diagnose and are predictable in treatment. Run on a volunteer basis, with a relatively small budget, it would quickly run out of money if it sponsored expensive operations like heart surgery.
Instead, the doctors and other medical experts focus on deformities and injuries like cataracts, crossed eyes, cleft lips and palates, club feet, or legs missing below the knees. The foundation began in the Philippines around 1987 and was called "Mabuhay-Deseret," with the Tagalog word "Mabuhay" meaning a warm greeting, like "aloha."
"That's where we cut our eyeteeth and sort of evolved a bit," Jackson said. "We went to the finest Filipino doctors in these speciality areas," asking them to volunteer their services. The foundation supplied the patients, gave referrals and found places for the patients to live during the operations; and the local doctors operated.
"They were excited about it," Jackson said. "They wanted to be part of it. Too often in overseas medical programs, we exclude these people."
The program was so successful that in 1989 its founders decided to expand it worldwide. At the time, it was facilitating 25 operations a month in the Philippines; today, in that country alone, it helps with 120 monthly.
"In addition, we run an eye bank," he said. It is "the only eye bank in the entire country of 60 million people."
Wherever Deseret International works, it follows the same philosophy: design the program to meet the country's needs and get the local people involved.
Local medical practitioners tell how the foundation can help, whether through supplies, financial assistance, technical information or medical training.
Joel E. Leetham, the group's executive secretary, added that the foundation trains local doctors to carry out the work.
Blayne Hirsche, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, went to Manauga, Nicaragua, last year, volunteering his services to Deseret International.
"I'm planning on going to Guatemala this year, in May," he told the Deseret news. "We're trying to get things established down there. I'm trying to make this a year project," offering help wherever it's needed.
Jackson said Zimbabwe, in Africa, had a fine hospital but no cataract surgery was done there. "They didn't have that capability. That was one thing they requested," he said.
Deseret International Foundation sent in four doctors over two years, to help teach modern cataract surgery, in which lenses are implanted.
"At the end of two years, they were doing between 60 and 100 charity cases," he said.
Deseret International continued helping with supplies. Last October, the British Medical Association sent an accreditation team to check out the medical school, and it discovered that the caliber of cataract surgery was on a par with that practiced in the United Kingdom, he said.
In Costa Rica, the foundation runs a hospice, where about 100 children a month and their mothers are housed before and after going to the pediatrics hospital.
In El Salvador, the foundation was contacted by a women's group, which said it had lined up 5,000 or 6,000 people who needed eye care. Some of the people were on opposing sides during the just-concluded civil war.
Around Thanksgiving 1991, Des-eret International Foundation flew several health professionals to El Salvador, where they provided eye care. The group did the same thing last year and now has established a program.
Jackson said the foundation has kept its overhead low because everybody volunteers time. "We find there are people out there and companies out there and supply houses out there who are willing to volunteer and give," he said.
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How to donate
Those interested in donating medical expertise, supplies or money for the medical charity work of Deseret International Foundation can contact Dr. E. William Jackson, the group's president, or executive secretary Joel E. Leetham, at foundation offices in Provo, 221-0919. Or they can write to the foundation at 890 Quail Valley Drive, Provo, UT 84604.