A Doctor’s Journey of Mercy : A surgeon from L.A. turned a Nepal trip into a mission to help people with cleft palates. Needs are the same in both places, she says.

For Dr. Libby Wilson, a surgeon at White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles, a trip to Nepal 10 years ago turned into an odyssey of mercy to save lives in that remote part of the world.

An avid hiker, Wilson joined a group that was trekking along the trails of the Himalayas to a Hindu shrine. During the trip, she visited a local hospital in Katmandu, where a doctor asked her to help start a program in Nepal to help children with cleft palates, modeled after programs she has directed for years in the Los Angeles area.

Wilson, 57, is medical director and chief surgeon of the cleft palate program at White Memorial, where she heads a 30-member team of doctors whose specialties include pediatrics, orthodontics, nutritional services and plastic surgery.

In her small Los Angeles office, scattered with a few unpacked boxes and a wooden bookcase filled with medical texts, Wilson recalled the efforts that led her to duplicate in Nepal the programs that have helped hundreds of children in Southern California.

For 25 years, she headed a program for children with cleft palates at Rancho Los Amigos, a county-run medical center in Downey. That program was scrapped last September, however, a victim of county budget cuts.

Determined to find a way to keep a similar program going elsewhere, Wilson went to White Memorial and presented a proposal to start a program there. The hospital agreed, and Wilson and more than half the doctors who had worked for the cleft palate program at Rancho Los Amigos moved to White Memorial in December. They celebrated the opening of the program last month.

The White Memorial center--one of four such programs in Los Angeles--treats about 900 patients a year with cleft palates, a correctable birth defect that affects one out of every 700 U.S. children. Those with the condition have an opening in the upper lip or the roof of the mouth, or both, that can make it difficult to eat, speak and breathe.

Cleft lips and palates, the third most common birth defect, after clubfeet and heart defects, affect about 1,000 children born in California annually, and about 7,000 nationwide, according to the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program, a state program established in 1982.

At her Los Angeles office, Wilson sits down with patients and their families to discuss surgical procedures, bottle-feeding and counseling services. She is like a family member to many of her patients, who have invited her to birthday celebrations, weddings and graduations.

“She has been caring for me since I was born,” said 25-year-old Jose Diaz, a premed student at Cal State Los Angeles and an office assistant at the cleft palate center.

“Working with her, I watch the care in her work,” Diaz said. “She is like a mother to so many. I feel honored working next to her.”

When she made her first to Nepal in 1986, Wilson had no plans to start a medical program. She stopped by Kanti Children’s Hospital in Katmandu out of curiosity.

“I saw the need of children in Nepal like I see the needs of the children here,” Wilson said. “In Nepal, though, that need had not been addressed. I met with staff at a hospital there who asked for my help in training doctors in surgical procedures for cleft patients.”

Starting a program in Nepal presented a particular challenge because medical care is out of reach--both geographically and financially--for many children and adults, she said. “In developing countries like Nepal, this program didn’t exist,” Wilson said. “Babies are born at home in mountainous areas. Some children have died from cleft palate.”

Last year, 400 patients with cleft palates were treated at Kanti Children’s Hospital, she said.

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She Wilson established the Nepal program with Dr. Narayan Thapa, a surgeon who estimates that 40,000 people in Nepal have cleft palates. The program, which operates with a staff of two surgeons and five assistants, performs surgeries twice a week on patients who travel from all parts of Nepal to receive medical care.

Wilson travels to Nepal twice a year at her own expense. Doctors from as far away as Japan and Australia have traveled to the hospital in Nepal to help train program volunteers.

Wilson said her goal is to have surgeons trained so the hospital can perform the corrective surgeries five to six times a week. In addition, she hopes to expand a postoperative program so trained speech therapists can work with patients in Nepal.

“She has changed many lives,” said Dr. Baharat Thapa, a medical assistant at the Nepal hospital. “‘Everyone here is extremely happy and thankful for her work.”

“We set goals for ourselves,” Wilson said. “We journey through life to achieve that goal, be it in the mountains of Nepal or a hospital in East Los Angeles.”

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The Beat

Today’s centerpiece focuses on the cleft palate program at White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles, which is directed by Dr. Libby Wilson. For more information about the services offered, call (213) 268-5000.