North West: Smile Train to rescue children with cleft lips

By Nukapuh .P

Children born with cleft lips in the North West region will in the days ahead have specialists to take care of them and help restitute their facial structure.

This comes after a memorandum of understanding was signed between the North West Regional Assembly and Smile Train, a charity organization that is specialized in taking care of cleft palate disease.

During the official signing, which took place on Thursday January 26, 2023 at the North West Regional Assembly in Bamenda, the Program Director of Smile Train for West and Central Africa, Dr. Nicole Bouba revealed that at least 800 children are born with cleft palates or lips every year.

“Our objective is to bring smiles to all those cleft children, help them get sugeries and if we are not able to reach these patients, our mission will not be met. We are here to leverage on the partnership with the North West Regional Assembly, to be able to reach many cleft patients in the North West region,” Dr. Nicole Bouba said.

Research proves that children born with cleft lips are unable to speak and feed well. It is usually caused by the type of food a mother eats during pregnancy or the combination of some genes.

While adding that the unit will be at the Mbingo Baptist hospital, the Director made it clear that children born with cleft will be treated and taken care of with no fee required.

While reiterating that at times, it is very difficult to reach out to these children especially in the local communities, Dr. Nicole Bouba called on parents to shun stigmatization and show up for the treatment of their children:

“Cleft birth is common, we are not able to reach all the patients because most of them are isolatated because of descrimination, stigmatization. We have a certain number of cleft births but it is still difficult to reach these people”.

Signing on behalf of the North West Regional Assembly was Prof. Fru Angwafo who talked about the interest of the assembly and their role to help Smile Train easily identify some of the cases in the communities

“This will strengthen the committement between the Regional Assembly and the people of the region. Our collaboration is a blessing to the people of the North West region because it is healing our crisis – striken population in many ways. I think It will also strengthen the relationship between American donors and the people of our region,” Fru Angwafo said.

With over 3000 surgeries in Cameroon, Smile Train is noted as one of the largest cleft care organizations in the world. One of their implementing partners in Cameroon is the Cameroon Baptist
Convention.