Moreano is giving them another chance at life.” “These kids with deformities are often rejected by their towns and villages, who see them as cursed or marked by the devil. “It’s important to support one of our own with this important mission,” Pileggi said. Gene Pileggi, 79, who also lives in Bayville and has known Moreano for nearly a decade, said he was more than happy to donate to his cause. The trips usually cost about $30,000, so Moreano depends on local fundraisers, which normally raise about half that amount.
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It takes months of planning, he said, to travel with a full team and medical supplies, so he settled on doing one mission a year. Even so, Moreano often hears stories about children who walk for two days to try to make it to surgery, only to miss him on the final day.īureaucracy and fundraising are two of his biggest challenges. Many of the places they visit have only one or two operating rooms available at the nearest hospital, he explained, so the team sets up temporary rooms to treat as many kids as possible. He and other plastic surgeons, assisted by anesthesiologists and nurses, undertake more than 90 surgeries each year. On the week-long missions, Moreano and nearly 40 other volunteers try to evaluate as many as 300 children in the cities and villages they visit. With this surgery, they can experience a life they never had before.” “We want the people of Bayville to know about this opportunity to help others,” Moreano said.
He held a special fundraiser at the Mill Creek Tavern in Bayville on Feb. This year Moreano is planning his 25th mission trip: He and a team of volunteer medical professionals will travel to Macas, Ecuador, on Feb. In 1999, Moreano began planning regular trips to Ecuador and other Latin American countries, and established the Moreano World Medical Mission, a nonprofit organization that offers plastic surgery to children who do not have access to it. Afterward he completed a fellowship at the McCollough Aesthetic Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala., before settling in at NYU Winthrop Hospital. Moreano graduated from SUNY Stony Brook’s School of Medicine in 1992, and did his residency at the University of Iowa in 1997. When he learned that those deformities were easily treated in the U.S., Moreano pursued a career in medicine and began a lifelong mission to help others. During those visits, Moreano met children suffering with facial deformities and the social stigma that came with them. Edwin Moreano, 51, of Bayville, moved from Ecuador to Queens when he was 8 years old, he frequently visited his hometown of Guayaquil in the years afterward.
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