The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Cleft lip correction: more centres planned

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 15, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Cleft lip correction: more centres planned

Y. Mallikarjun

Cleft-Children International provides free surgical correction at five centres in the country

HYDERABAD: With about 32,000 to 35,000 children born every year with cleft lip and palate in India, the Zurich-based Cleft-Children International, which is currently providing free surgical correction in five specialised medical centres in the country, proposes to scale them up to 15.

While a child with cleft lip is born every three minutes in the world, India has one of the highest number of cases, according to CCI’s president Hermann F. Sailer, a renowned reconstructive and cosmetic surgeon.

CCI is a non-profit foundation operating on children affected by cleft lip and palate.

Prof. Sailer came to the city to interact with doctors at GSR Institute of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the five centres being helped by CCI. The CCI had so far donated $ 7 million to these centres.

The other centres are at Mumbai, Mangalore, Chennai and Kolkata.

It is estimated that close to 15 children million untreated cases are in India alone.

He intends to set up one centre each year with UP, Delhi and north-east figuring prominently among the places for the new units.

He said CCI had so far trained 170 doctors in the country and around 13,000 surgeries were performed on children with cleft lip. In most cases, a child with cleft lip and palate would have to undergo three to four surgeries by the time he or she turns 10. He said the centres set up in India were as good as the one operating at Zurich.

Calling for removing the prejudice against children with cleft lip, Prof. Sailer said such kids were found to have higher IQ than the normal ones. Though definite causes of cleft lip still remain unclear, folic acid deficiency during pregnancy, consanguineous marriages and certain environmental and genetic factors were associated with cleft formation. Incidentally, it occurs more in boys than girls.

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