KARACHI: 60 cleft lip patients to get free treatment: Experts leave for Tando Adam
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, June 14: An eight-member medical team, including plastic surgeons, on Thursday left for Tando Adam to voluntarily correct problems associated with cleft lip or palate in about 60 patients in the interior of Sindh.According to the team leader, Dr Mohammed Ashraf Ganatra, head of the plastic surgery department of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), the doctors will perform surgeries on patients of different age groups, mostly children, from June 15 to 16 at a Tando Adam charitable hospital.
Speaking at a press conference held prior to the team’s departure, DUHS vice-chancellor Prof Masood Hameed Khan said that the university had organised surgeries for the treatment of patients with cleft lip and cleft palate as part of its community health care and outreach programme.
Prof Khan said that the doctors and technical staff required to repair the clefts had recently been trained further by foreign experts under the university’s professional development programme.
The vice-chancellor said that the overall disease’s burden on the country included 50 to 60 per cent of those suffering from hepatitis or diabetes and psychiatric problems and as such the role of a medical university could not be ignored in creating awareness about preventive diseases and cures.
Karachi had a good number of plastic surgeons and that was why we found it appropriate to reach the rural population for treating cleft lips and palates, particularly when no other university or health care institutions was working on the same subject, Prof Khan responded to a questioner.
Speaking at the conference, Dr Ganatra said that the medical camp on cleft lips and palates was being held at Tando Adam due to a multidisciplinary approach involving paediatric, general surgeons and anaesthesia experts belonging to Karachi and other districts of the province and a charitable hospital.
Arrangements had also been made to take care of patients after surgeries and maintain follow ups at the doorsteps of the patients, he added.
According to Dr Ganatra, cleft lip and cleft palate was one of the most common congenital anomalies. The incidence of the anomaly in Pakistan was one in 400 births; he said adding that 0.25 million to 0.3 million people were suffering from these facial deformities, out of which 50 to 60 thousand lived in Sindh.
He said that about 9,000 babies were born with cleft lip and/or palate in a year in the province, which might be attributed to genetic disorders or environmental problems. Due to poor education of parents and guardians or non-affordability of relevant treatment hardly 2,000 babies were provided with interventions at the government and private health care facilities on time, he mentioned.
Speaking on the number of plastic surgeons, Dr Ganatra said that Sindh was fortunate to have about 30 such surgeons, but the problem was that they practised mainly in Karachi and Hyderabad. In order to ensure the availability of expertise and overcoming the shortage of plastic surgeons, efforts were now being made to train the general and paediatric surgeons working in the interior of Sindh for undertaking cleft lip and plate repairs, he said.
The team from Karachi, which will examine and perform surgeries on poor patients of cleft lip and palate in collaboration with local doctors and hospitals, includes Dr Abdul Qamar, Dr Asad Awan, Dr Zia Qazi, Talat Mahmood, Nasrullah and Abdul Hameed.
