Our first day in Ethiopia begins with a visit to a house made out of cow dung. We meet a young, married couple who have traveled 250 kilometers to save their baby from clubfoot.

The husband and wife are around 20 years old. He is a farmer who rents the land he farms on and makes about $30 a month. The baby boy who has clubfoot is their third child – their first two children died. They were very grateful to get free treatment for their son as they told us they could never afford it. It took just 6 weeks and now their son’s feet are perfectly straight.

We went to a clubfoot clinic that’s helped more than 6,000 children over the past 5 years. It’s a great start but there are about 50,000 children suffering from clubfoot in Ethiopia and waiting to be helped.

One of the biggest problems is most the families and even many nurses and doctors have no idea there is a simple cure for clubfoot.

But with each child that goes back to their village after treatment, with straight feet, 3-4 more kids with clubfoot show up at the clinic.

We visited several major hospitals and plastic surgery clinics including the largest burn wards in Ethiopia.

Burns is a completely different story. Unlike clubfoot cases which always have a happy ending, a burn victim usually faces a lifetime of suffering and disability.

The surgery we help provide for burn victims usually has a huge impact and can greatly improve their quality of life for them, but happy endings are far and few between.

In the burn wards, we went bed to bed, meeting each patient, getting a brief medical summary, and then we listened to their stories of how they were burned. Each one was different, but they were all heartbreaking. Most of them had waited many years to receive surgery because they had no money.