Charleston's Dr. Hochman Receives National Community Service Award

Charleston, September 25, 2008: Dr. Marcelo Hochman, head of Charleston’s Hemangioma International Treatment Center and found of The Hemangioma Treatment Foundation has been awarded the prestigious annual AAFPRS Community Service Award. Dr. Hochman is one of the world’s leading doctors in the treatment of hemangiomas and other vasular birthmarks which affects ten percent of all births or approximately 400,000 children a year. 

The award was presented to Dr. Hochman in Chicago at the annual conference of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS), the world’s largest association of doctors in this field which has over 3,000 members. The AAFPRS Community Service Award is presented each year to the doctor who has distinguished him/herself by “making possible free medical service to the poor in his community.” 

Dr. Hochman has established himself as one of the world’s leading doctors dealing with hemangioma. Patients from all over the United States and from many different countries around the world come to his clinic in Charleston, which is increasingly recognized as the destination point for parents seeking reassurances and solutions to the problems of vascular birthmarks with their children, both physical and emotional. 

In 2003, Dr. Hochman received a plea from a family who could not find or afford help for their child. Having had his own son afflicted with hemangioma, Dr. Hochman felt something more had to be done for those families unable to pay for proper treatment, so he created The Hemangioma Treatment Center Foundation, one of the first of its kind in the country. Today, the foundation is able to help several families in need receive the treatment their children require each month. 

“I was honored to receive this award from my contemporaries,” said, Dr. Marcelo Hochman today. “We are about to initiate more fund raising activities for the foundation in the near future in order to help more parents who have nowhere-else to turn. I am also very pleased to see that Charleston is becoming a recognized center for medical treatment and I am proud to have my clinic as part of that community treating not only patients from the United States, but around the world as well.” 

There is no other organization in the world dedicated exclusively to providing charitable treatment to children with vascular birthmarks than The Hemangioma Treatment Center Foundation. www.hemangiomatreatment.org