DRAGONS’ Den tycoon Duncan Bannatyne has funded a life-changing charity mission in the Philippines.
In association with Operation Smile, the Clydebank-born businessman has paid in excess of £120,000 to provide surgery for more than 120 children born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.
Mr Banntayne said: “I went on my first Operation Smile mission in 2013 to Mexico. I have done a lot of work for charity over the years, but this was by far the most emotional experience I have ever had in my life.”
It is a particularly poignant trip as the Philippines is where Operation Smile was started by Bill and Kathy Magee 35 years ago.
Mr Bannatyne, who is an ambassador of the charity and donated his fee for appearing on I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! to support its work, also funded a mission to Ghana, following previous trips to Mexico and Vietnam to see for himself the life-changing operations being carried out by the charity.
On his visits he witnessed some of the surgeries first-hand and got to know many of the parents and children who the charity is helping.
He added: “Charity work often leaves you feeling depressed and helpless, thinking ‘there must be more I can do’. Operation Smile is different. You see first-hand a child’s life changed forever by a simple operation that takes less than one hour. You see the children’s new smile and the happy tears of their parents. For me, it doesn’t get much better than that. Their parents can watch them have a normal childhood with friends, get an education and fall in love. We need to keep making this happen because there are still so many children suffering.”
Operation Smile is an international children’s medical charity with a presence in more than 60 countries, whose network of more than 5,400 medical volunteers from over 80 countries is dedicated to helping improve the health and lives of children.
Since its founding in 1982, Operation Smile has provided hundreds of thousands of free surgeries for children and young adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities.
It trains doctors and local medical professionals in its partner countries so they are empowered to treat their local communities.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here