Mercedes Paz tries to make herself invisible. Head tucked down, hands covering her twisted mouth, body curled inward, the 18-year-old sits on a roughhewn bench in the waiting room of this medical outpost. Like others at the clinic, she waits to be able to eat and breathe easier. To have a smile.

They wait to be seen by a team of medical volunteers who have just arrived in Santiago del Estero, this remote northwest corner of Argentina. The vast majority of the patients are children who, like Mercedes, have congenital deformities affecting the mouth and face, conditions that would be repaired routinely in infancy in the United States.

If he could, Newport Beach plastic surgeon Michael Niccole would mend them all, one by one. But in 10 days, there won't be time, even with the international team he assembled of more than 30 surgeons, anesthesiologists, pediatricians, nurses and support staff to work at the rudimentary regional hospital nearby. Niccole's team, and with the help of more than three dozen volunteers from this city of 200,000, will see a steady stream of patients, 204 in all. For nearly every patient who is treated, another must be turned away. By the time the team leaves in early June, it will have performed 151 surgeries on 106 patients, most of them young children.

http://articles.latimes.com/print/1999/sep/28/news/cl-14836

Story & Photography Gail Fisher for the Los Angeles Times