Our team in Lagos, Nigeria was featured in the local news!

Please enjoy. (Video transcript below)

Cleft Lip Surgery: Organisers Say Initiative Will Boost Confidence Of Children

[TVC News Anchor]: This is TVC News at 10. Cleft lip and palate are congenital abnormalities that occur when tissues of the upper lip or the roof of the mouth fails to join properly during fetal development.

[TVC News Anchor]: In Nigeria, many children born with this condition are often left untreated due to limited access to care.  But a recent outreach by a non-governmental organization and its partners are bringing hope to affected children through free constructive, reconstructive surgeries in Lagos State.

[TVC News Anchor]: Glory Aramo tells us more about it.

[TVC News Glory Aramo]: Children are special gifts from God to parents, but their smiles could be taken away when the unexpected tampers with the development of the child.

[TVC News Glory Aramo]: For 27 year old mother of Shepherd, she recounts the struggles, especially the pain of raising a child in isolation.

[Mother]: The day when I gave birth to this child, is where the day I just come outside.  Then I saw something for his mouth.  I said “what happened?”  As I bring my child, we bump into one woman who came to say “what happened to the baby’s mouth?  Is it [from] the time you [got] pregnant?” I said “No.”

[TVC News Glory Aramo]: According to research, over 4,000 babies in Nigeria are born with cleft lips each year.

[AfS Partner Deinde]: Defects of the lips and pallets are congenital defects.  Some children are unfortunately born with those defects, and when they are born, they have a lot of difficulties.  One: they are not able to suckle the breast well for feeding.  They are also prone to developing infections of the ear & of the throat.  They have dental problems.  They also have psychological problems.  They look different from everyone else.

[AfS Mission Director Tina Fischlin]: Our goal is to get a child as early as possible.  Our goal is to operate on the cleft lip or the cleft palette before they begin to speak, so they don’t form a speech habit that we would need additional cleft speech therapy.

[TVC News Glory Aramo]: Rotary Club, the organizers of the outreach, say the free cleft surgery initiative is part of efforts to give children born with cleft lip a new chance at life and restore confidence to children.

[Rotary Partner 1]: The initiative is driven by the need to put smiles on the face of people with deformity.  These children, some of them cannot even eat, they cannot talk.  And if you see their demeanor or countenance, it is always that of anger or that of emotion.

[Rotary Partner 2]: The situation of each child varies.  So there are some that may need some pre-treatment so that they will be able to withstand the surgery.  There are some that will go into the surgeries.  We can estimate a sum of maybe between 1 million to 2 million per child.

[TVC News Glory Aramo]: The story in this hospital for mothers of children with cleft lip is similar.  They hope that more outreaches like this will be an eye opener and the reason why many families will smile again.