First “Nagaland cleft care camp” conducted by Mission Smile—a medical charity, with financial support from NEEPCO held at the Eden Medical Centre, the multi-speciality hospital, Dimapur successfully concluded with 35 cleft patients receiving corrective surgeries for their cleft deformities.
The cleft camp was inaugurated on April 21 by DGM- NEEPCO and in-charge Doyang Hydro-Electric Power Plant Prasenjit Phookan in the auditorium of Eden Medical Centre.
NHM of Nagaland also supported the camp through patient mobilisation through its Rastriya Bal Surksha Karyakram (RBSK) programme and also funded the TA/DA for the patients.
According to Mission Smile, Nagaland with a population of about 2.2 million has an estimated cleft backlog of about 2500 cleft patients. About 50% of children have both lip and palate deformity which means that 50 out of 100 children will require a second surgery to correct the cleft palate. The demand for cleft surgery was hence more than the number of patients in any State.
“The response of the patients and guardians have convinced us that there is a great need in this State and therefore we will come back so that more such patients can benefit from our services”, remarked field medical director of the camp, Dr Hiteswar Sarma.
Mission Smile informed that first camp was being conducted with the objective of providing 50 surgeries and added that 15 more surgeries would be conducted within the next two weeks.
The camp was conducted by a team from Guwahati Comprehensive Cleft Care Centre, which is a joint initiative of Mission Smile and the Government of Assam, with human resource support from Eden Medical Centre and AIIMS- Rishikesh. All together 39 patients were screened during the Camp.