While a child with cleft lip is born every three minutes in the world, India has one of the highest number of cases, says Hermann F. Sailer, president of the Cleft-Children International (CCI), based in Zurich, Switzerland.
It is estimated that close to 15 children million untreated cases are in India alone. About 32,000 to 35,000 children born every year with cleft lip and palate.
CCI is a non-profit foundation operating on children affected by cleft lip and palate. It is currently providing free surgical correction in five specialised medical centres in India and is planning to set up ten more such centres across the country.
Prof. Sailer was in Hyderabad recently to interact with doctors at a premier plastic surgery institute and where the CCI-assisted cleft lip surgeries are performed.
“Cleft” is used to describe any of the most common congenital oral-facial deformities. It is popularly referred to as “hare lip” or “hair lip.”
It appears around the lip or palate of a developing foetus during 4-8 weeks of pregnancy. In normal cases, during this time, the two halves of the lip and palate tissue fuse together to form a normal structure. But owing to various reasons, the tissue doesn't join properly, resulting in cleft.
Though definite causes of cleft lip still remained unclear, folic acid deficiency during pregnancy, consanguineous marriages and certain environmental and genetic factors were associated with cleft formation. Also it occurred more in boys than in girls.
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