Dr. Kimit Rai, an internationally recognized plastic surgeon, founded Operation Rainbow Canada in 1998, a non-profit medical humanitarian organization that provides free cleft lip and palate corrective surgery to impoverished children and young adults in developing countries.

His passion about the value we bring to the future of children has so far transformed the lives of more than 2,000 children in places such as Cambodia, India, Lebanon, Mexico and the Philippines.

Without any paid mission staff, Dr. Rai serves as both teacher and mentor, providing education and hands-on training to Canadian medical residents who volunteer their time on missions and to health care professionals in the host countries.

Operation Rainbow has trained Canadian plastic surgery residents, as well as anesthesia fellows and paediatric residents in BC Children’s Hospital.

In collaboration with the Canada Ukraine Foundation, Dr. Rai travelled to Ukraine in 2014 on a 10-day mission focused on post-traumatic and acute trauma surgeries for victims of demonstrations during civil unrest, as well as injured soldiers from Eastern Ukraine.

Born to refugee parents in Kuala Lumpur, Dr. Rai entered medical practice in a government general hospital, then further developed his skills during mandatory enlistment in the Malaysian army. After earning the rank of captain, he left his home and family to study plastic surgery by the University of BC.

As a plastic surgery resident on the burns and isolation ward at Vancouver General Hospital, he completed his training at the University of British Columbia and received his plastic surgery certification in 1975.