Johan Vehof MD, PhD

Dr. Johan Vehof is a plastic surgeon at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem. He has extensive experience in cleft palate surgery from newborns to adults. He was trained at the Radboud UMC in Nijmegen by Prof. Dr. Paul Spauwen and also learned a lot from Brian Sommerlad at the renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Dr. Johan Vehof was part of the University schsis team in Nijmegen for 8 years, at that time the largest team in the Netherlands. For years he treated several children with a form of cleft palate here every week. In addition, he was active in the cleft palate team Arnhem until January 2016.

In 2009, Johan Vehof was asked to set up a relief mission together for China when Care4Tina was founded. Between 2010 and 2020, Johan Vehof traveled annually with Care4Tina to Xian to selflessly help children for two weeks. Since then, he has treated more than 425 children in China.

In 2018 and 2019, he also traveled with "Harapan Jaya" Foundation to Pemantang Siantar in Sumatra Indonesia to treat children with cleft palate or burns there as well. There he saw that there is a great need for sustainable provision of cleft palate aid. Training local aid workers is an essential part of providing cleft palate aid.

In the early 2020s, Covid-19 made it impossible to travel abroad to assist. In Xian, care for children with cleft palate continued, as usual, thanks to the work of the Care4Tina team as local doctors learned to operate on cleft palate independently using modern techniques. This illustrates the importance of providing sustainable help, and working with and training local people, two key principles of Help2Smile.