Tata Steel today formally inaugurated the third consecutive mission of ‘Operation Smile’ at Jamshedpur. About 150 patients from across Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Chhattisgarh will be treated during this nine day camp during 17th to 25th March, 2011.

The camp was inaugurated at Tata Main Hospital in presence of Dr Mrs Himani Pandey, Deputy Commissioner (East Singhbhum) and chief guest on the occasion; Mrs Surekha Nerurkar; Mr Sanjiv Paul, Vice President (Corporate Services), Tata Steel; Dr T P Madhusudanan, General Manager (Medical Services), Tata Steel; Dr Samuel Fuller, Head of Operation Smile team and others.

The primary screening sessions of the camp took place on 17th 18th March, 2011. The surgeries and post operative care are being conducted between 20th to 25th March, 2011. Extending a warm welcome to the patients and their families, Dr Pande said, “Cleft lip and cleft palate correction is one of the key areas of focus of the Govt and together, we need to do much more than what we are doing to ensure that all newborns in our country are gifted with a smile on their faces.”

Mrs Nerurkar spoke at length on the need to spread awareness amongst the masses at large about health factors that would enable cleft free newborns in days to come.

Ensuring the well being of its fellow citizens by way of a healthy life has been one of the priorities of Tata Steel as a responsible corporate citizen, ever since its inception. Speaking on Tata Steel’s sustainability initiatives, Mr Paul said, “Operation Smile has given us another way to reach out to more number of people from different parts of the country, suffering from this deformity.”

Dr Fuller lauded the role of Tata Steel in taking this mission to the doorstep of thousands, saying, “Together with the help of Tata Steel, Operation Smile aims to cover over 35,000 cleft patients in the country.”

‘Operation Smile’, one of the large humanitarian non-profit international volunteer medical services organization, was founded by Dr William P Magee, a plastic surgeon and his wife, Kathleen, a nurse and clinical social worker, in 1982, when the Magee's travelled to the Philippines with a group of medical volunteers to repair children's cleft lips and cleft palates.

The Company has reached out to several thousands of children suffering from cleft lip deformity through several initiatives in Jamshedpur and its neighbouring as well as far flung areas. Cleft lip correction takes a significant place in Lifeline Express mission for all the fifteen times sponsored by Tata Steel. ‘Operation Smile’ is another such path-breaking initiative that Tata Steel has partnered to ensure that its fellow citizens lead a healthy and deformity free life.