You have either taken the ice water splash challenge or are here to quench your curiosity.
The ALS ice bucket challenge has definitely done a world of good for the research and funding for ALS patients...
After a lot of thought on how to use this wave of ice bucket challenge to help our people in need we came up with a tweaked version to increase awareness on CLEFT LIP AND PALATE anomalies.
Since we have a lot of water shortage this task has been reduced to just a glass of ice water to be splashed on your face.
Take the ice splash challenge and nominate people whom you know would love to come forward and help this cause.
Refreshed you smile and your donations will help a million smile with you.
Cleft Lip & Palate is a birth defect that occurs
approximately, 1 in every 700 live births in India. This translates to about
35,000 babies being born with this defect every year in this country. These
defects can be corrected with surgery and other adjunct procedures and the
child can lead a normal life like other children. However the whole treatment
process is long drawn out, from birth sometimes up-to adulthood. This involves
on an average 3-4 surgeries and other adjunctive treatment including speech therapy
and orthodontics and needs multidisciplinary team of specialists to provide the
care. More than 75% of these children belong to the lower socio-economic strata
and the families cannot afford to provide the required treatment. . However,
today we have a number of Non governmental organizations involved in the care
of these children in our country and this has revolutionized, both the quality and the quantity of care
provided, which is more or less comprehensive.
We at
the Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital at Bangalore, are partners with one such
NGO, the New-York based charity the Smile Train .We have carried out treatment,
including surgery for more than 5000 patients, young and old alike, totally
free of cost, by virtue of this partnership and are very grateful to Smile
Train for this opportunity. At present Smile Train funds only the immediate
preoperative and postoperative period i.e. the surgical intervention for cleft
repair. Smile Train also funds other
interventions like speech therapy and orthodontics for these patients and also
funds things like travel to and fro to the hospital as well spreading awareness
regarding this project at our hospital
As already mentioned, a majority of these patients come from
poor socio-economic backgrounds as well as from rural areas. Often there are
other serious problems that crop up with these patients, and are influenced by the
congenital defect. These include failure to thrive, because of the difficulty
in feeding, recurrent chest infections and gastroenteritis and sometimes these
can be life threatening. These patients often require admission to the ICU and
care for a number of days. Treating these serious illnesses is a major problem
because it costs significant sums of money and funding is not available for
these activities and the parents themselves cannot afford it.
 |
| Malnourished and failure to thrive |
 |
| After treatment for malnourishment |
 |
| After Cleft lip Correction at 2 years |
We are therefore
looking out for funds to take care of
this issue and we think this is where you can come to our aid.
Your contributions will help us save these children and provide
hope for the emotionally deterred parents.
We invite you to join us in our endeavor to gift these
children an opportunity to live. We hope that these patients pass those early
days of distressing illness with your support and make it to the surgery.
The contributions will be used entirely for the benefit of
our patients. Our contribution expense details will be made available through
this blog. We will eventually be able to build a website for the same in due
course and improve the payment gateway.
The contributions made will be eligible for tax exemption
under 80G category.
Please email drdipesh.rao@gmail.com, dipeshdrao@gmail.com for bank details or payment options.
