Children’s Day: Organisation funds 30,000 cleft lip, palate repairs

Smile Train, Nigeria, says it has successfully done over 30,000 cleft lips and palate repairs in Nigeria and through its Sing and Smile clubs is helping to create safe spaces for children with cleft lips and palates undergoing speech therapy.

Smile Train’s helpline officer, Nigeria, Mr Paul Lobi speaking at the Sing and Smile Club Children’s Day Concert, in Ibadan, said the concert was the Smile train team’s way of identifying with children with cleft lip and palate on the day.

Mr Lobi said that the Sing and Smile club in three hospitals, which started as an upshot of the organisation’s psychosocial support, is to complement the free surgical care for children with cleft lips and palate.

According to him, “We are not just focusing on quality surgery; we are also into other programmes such as the speech rehabilitation and nutrition programme. The Sing and Smile Club, which is an upshot of our psychosocial support programme is to create a platform where the children can express themselves.

“We hope that the activities of the Sing and Smile Club will also help in their speech development. There are plans to scale up to other partner hospitals so that more children can have a platform to express themselves.”

UCH’s Chief Medical Director, Professor Jesse Otegbayo, who spoke through the hospital’s deputy chairman, Medical Advisory Committee (Clinical Services), Dr Taiwo Soyinka stated that the Sing and Smile club children’s day concert has brought smiles to the faces of these children born with cleft lip and palate, thereby improve their psychosocial wellbeing.

He declared that the birth defect usually makes the children have speech and eating problems and unable to smile, thereby causing them many psychosocial problems, including anxiety, low self-esteem, unhappiness and socially timidity.

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According to him, “a smile warms the heart; having a smile improves an individual’s psychosocial well-being. The sing and smile club is providing them social support and when a child sees that I am not alone with the problem, he or she will feel better.”

Dean, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Ibadan, Professor Juliana Taiwo stated that SmileTrain’s efforts to restore smiles to these children’s faces through its free surgical correction of the birth defect and its Sing and smile club have gone a long way to improve the children’s quality of life and ensure they are restored into the society free of stigma and discrimination.

Lead, UCH’s Smile train team, Professor Odunayo Oluwatosin, said many centres have started cleft lip and palate repairs since the Smile train started in Ibadan about two decades ago to ensure repair of cases.