Cleft Lip and Clef Palate are common facial disfigurements that can occur during a babies time in the womb. On average there are 490,000 babies born each day worldwide and of these approximately one in every seven hundred new born babies are affected with either Cleft Lip and/or Cleft Palate

Cleft lip/palate can be rectified with surgery which in most cases, take place shortly after birth. Some doctors prefer earlier surgeries than others but all agree that performing cleft lip surgery in the early stages of life leads to a better recovery. There are many complications that occur for babies with an untreated cleft lip/plate including the inability to suckle properly. This leaves baby constantly hungry and crying as it is unhappy. The implications of this for young babies is that they can become malnourished. Untreated Cleft lip/palate also leads to impaired and underdeveloped speech. From the ages of 18 month to 3 years most children begin developing their speech by conversing with adults or at play groups. A child with an untreated cleft problem experiences great difficulty in forming words naturally which ultimately leads to severely restricted speech ability. Untreated, this speech impairment follows them into adulthood.

Beta Charitable Trust has a ground team that specialises in facial and orthopaedic disfigurements. The ground team have recently informed us Dr. Lilian Najuka, a brilliant and renowned plastic surgeon from Uganda, will be operating on patients affected by cleft lips, cleft palates, burn cases and contractures on the 5th February 2012 in Kigoma, Western Tanzania. The news of the doctors arrival is spreading through towns and villages. People affected with cleft lip/palates or who have a child who is affected by cleft lip/palate will get a chance to gain advice and help from doctors and professionals free of charge.

To do this each patient must be sponsored. The main reason a mother who has a child with a cleft problem, or an adult who is affected with a cleft deformity have not gone to seek medical advice before is simply due to the unaffordable expenditure of both travel to a medical clinic and the operation itself. With your help we hope to sponsor the completion of at least ten cleft operations, each one involving a consultation, the operation itself and aftercare. It is estimated the operation and aftercare will cost approximately £160 per patient.

With your help we know we can sponsor patients who have suffered for years with this problem, plus we can help a lot of children who would otherwise be confined to suffer throughout their childhood and into adulthood due to this easily reversible disfigurement. Please visit our medical section for more information on cleft disfigurements and to see the amazing medical procedures that have been possible due to previous generous donations.