About Cleft Lip/Cleft Palate surgeries
Born with scarred and misshapen lips, a crooked nose, lopsided teeth and unable to feed on anything without a problem, hundreds of thousands of children are born with disfiguring cleft lips and palates. In India, it is worse for baby girls as in many communities various methods are used by families to kill infant girls. Their fate is sealed if they are born with this disfigurement. Growing up as a child with this deformity is a life of being teased and taunted mercilessly. Most parents are too poor to afford corrective surgery. Without surgery infants sometimes starve to death because the milk flows into the nose and palate, causing infection and they are unable to nurse. School-age boys and girls don’t attend school because of their humiliation. Many see the disfigurement as a curse. Even thinking about marriage is often out of the question.
Some babies don’t have to live that kind of fate thanks to OBI’s cleft lip/cleft palate surgeries. Just one trip by OBI changes the lives of the affected children as the OB team makes arrangements for the child to undergo corrective surgery for the cleft lip/cleft palate. A successful surgery later, the beaming parents feel on top of the world as they hold their charming baby in their arms. OB brightens the faces of many babies born with a cleft-lip with a beautiful smile.
Until 15th May 2008 OBI performed 312 cleft lip/cleft palate surgeries in India.
Renuka asked ‘Why was I born like this?’
Renuka is just 8 years old yet she has a very heartbreaking problem. She said, ‘Every day at school was a torture for me, I wish I was never born.’ Though at first it sounds too profound to be coming from the lips of a mere...
No one teases me now
Every morning children wake up and look forward to a new day filled with fun, another day to enjoy. But for eleven year old Aslam each morning was painful, he had no joy in waking up as he didn’t have anything good to look...
OBI in action in Padher
Duka looks at both her children - do Shanker and Mamitha have a smile of perfection? Nabha waits her turn for her little daughter Lily Sahu's cleft lip to be surgically treated. Will her dream of bringing a smile on her...
The sun was setting in the Peddampur as Duka and her husband Janardhan walked back to their hut. They had a hard day's work at the fields and they hurried back to be with their children who were waiting for them at home. As they...
A Sweet Smile
The moment Prashant saw his new born baby girl called Sweety, his dreams were shattered; the girl was born with both cleft lip and palate. Slowly he recovered from the shock, consoled himself and comforted his wife.
The couple...