By CHATULA KAMPO –
A KENYAN based non-profit making organisation has operated on more than15 children with cleft lips and cleft palate at Author Davison Children Hospital (ADH) in Ndola.
Help a Child Face Tomorrow and Smile train camp conducted a free cleft lips and cleft palate operations on children between the age of two months and two years at ADH.
Clift lips and Cleft palate are birth defects that occur when a baby’s lip or mouth do not form properly. They happen early during pregnancy. A baby can have a cleft lip, a cleft palate, or both.
Acting ADH theater Superintendent Elizabeth Ziba in an in an interview yesterday said the medical team from Kenya had operated on 15 children between the age of  two months and two years  with  cleft lips from across the country.
She said two children were from Solwezi, two Kitwe, one from Lusaka and Chingola and that the rest were from Ndola.
Ms Ziba said the response from the public was not good as there wasn’t enough sensitastion on the programme that started  on Monday last week and ended yesterday.
She said the team targeted to operate on over 50 children with cleft lips and cleft in the country.
“We only received few patients this time around, it could be because there was little sensitisation on the programme. So far, about 15 patients have been operated on,”  he  said.
Ms Ziba added that the team also operated patients with hemangimal and had also done reconstructive surgery on a 19-year old man.
She  said cleft lips and cleft palates were hereditary and that some were  cause  by  environmental  factors such  as  poor  nutrition  by a mother  during pregnancy.
She said the condition could only be corrected after birth.
Ms Ziba said the medical team from Kenya is  expected  to be  back at the hospital in the next  six  months and  urged  parents with children with cleft  lips and  cleft palate to take their children for the  free operations.