Private School News

Blue Peter appeal

Saint Felix School has a very exciting link to this year’s ‘Operation Smile’ Blue Peter Appeal.

Doctor Per Hall, one of the surgeon’s followed by the Blue Peter cameras in India, is also the brother of Catherine Fuller, a parent at the school and the school shop manageress.

Doctor Hall visited Saint Felix to talk to the Junior School children about his time spent operating on Indian children born with a cleft pallet, and also showed them a slide show of photos. Blue Peter documented the work by their charity of the year, Operation Smile.

Per said: The appeal target was 20, 000 surgical gowns made from disused T-shirts, saving Operation Smile £3 per gown. A cleft lip operation costs £150 or the equivalent of 50 gowns and Saint Felix School has changed the lives of 5 children by producing 250 gowns. I am extremely lucky that I can take may “day job” off with me and use my training in a country where communication may only be through smiling, pointing and demonstration, and to work with nurses and doctors with little uniting language but a common goal to do as safely as we can whatever we can do to help. The smiles on the faces of the children we help and their parents are fantastic.”

Head of the Junior School at Saint Felix, Julia Campbell, added: “We are delighted that Per could visit us and talk to the children – to have someone with such first hand experience of something they are all very interested in is very special.”