"I cannot explain how I can feel happy when looking at the infected, stagnant mess of a young child’s amputated foot. Yet strangely, in my clinic today, I did. It was not the foot of course, but the face. The child smiled, his four-year-old eyes bright as buttons. They said to me, 'I have a future.' For a brief moment the eyes dulled when he screamed in pain as I tried gently to remove the dressing from his infected stump. Yet the pain soon settled and the smile returned, as the wound was irrigated clean. Yes, I thought, the first shoots of recovery are beginning to appear in Haiti." Richard Villar, Merlin surgical team leader.