FAQs

Operation Restore Hope Australia is an Australian surgical charity founded by Plastic Surgeon, Dr Darryl Hodgkinson, which provides aid to less privileged children in the Philippines with cleft lip and palate as well as other craniofacial birth defects and deformities.

Operation Restore Hope fields missions annually to metro Manila in the Philippines. Multiple missions to various provinces and islands are also fielded each year by teams of Filipino medical volunteers. The charity also supports a craniofacial program in Metro Manila in conjunction with The Mijares-Gurango Craniofacial Foundation.

While it is of course better to repair defects as early as possible (our youngest patient in the Philippines ever being 3 months old in a mission environment and 3 days old in a hospital environment) we try to accommodate everyone we can help. We do not turn people away. If a patient is not well enough to have surgery, it is our goal through early screening to help the patient be ready in time for the mission through nutritional programs or by getting medication to control problems such as asthma and tuberculosis. We only operate on persons who have been vetted by community social workers to be persons in need.

Since 1994 Operation Restore Hope Australia has operated on nearly 4,000 persons with cleft lip and palate as well as other craniofacial birth defects and deformities.

The average cost of an operation for our all Filipino staffed missions remains about $ 500 AUD whilst the cost of the mission staffed by overseas volunteers costs slightly more as the overseas mission takes place in Metro Manila and the other missions are in the provinces. ORHA's costs are kept so low due to the amount of volunteer support the charity has.