KARACHI, March 15: Forty-seven cleft lip surgeries were performed at a three-day medical camp set up at a charity hospital in Tando Adam last week. All surgeries were done free of cost by a doctors team from Karachi. The next camp will be held in June.

A team member, Assistant Professor, Dow University of Health Sciences and Head of the Department of Surgery, Civil Hospital Karachi, Dr Mohammad Ashraf Ganatra, said the surgeries supported by Contracture and Cleft Foundation (CCF) and Smile Train were performed on children as well as older people. The oldest person operated upon was 45 years old.

“The CCF was set up in 2004 to provide free treatment to the poor suffering from burn injuries and cleft disorders. However, we have not started surgeries for burns so far because there are so many cleft patients in the interior of Sindh who need to be treated on priority basis. In the last two years, 284 patients, mostly with cleft lips, have been operated at hospitals in Sukkur, Hyderabad and Nausheroferoz,” he said. A large number who couldn’t be operated due to complications were referred to Karachi and provided travel expenses, he added.

Stressing the need for creating awareness, he said that the misconception about the birth defect that it was linked to lunar or solar eclipse needed to be removed. Apart from physical disabilities, people with this birth defect went through a lot of psychological and social problems which were more severe in the case of girls, he said.

“In Pakistan, 25 out of the 10,000 children born every day, 25 have this defect. At Civil Hospital Karachi, 10 to 15 patients report daily at the surgery department on the two-day OPD. Complete recovery in cases of children having both cleft lip and palate can take years and the coordination of a team of doctors including a pediatrician, plastic surgeon, ENT, speech therapist and orthodontist so that all aspects of treatment can be covered,” he said.

The risk factors, he said, included genetic factors which increased vulnerability in cases of cousin marriages or if by chance both parents were affected, deficiency of folic acid and iron in pregnant women and exposure to radiation during the first three months of pregnancy. Children with oral-facial clefts were exposed to chest and respiratory infections and middle ear disease. —Our Reporter