The North West Department of Health and the Smile Foundation conducted reconstructive surgeries on 11 children born with facial deformities. The surgeries included cleft lip and palate at Klerksdorp’s Tshepong Hospital Complex in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District. This transpired during a week set aside for the “Smile Campaign” that started on 17-21 April 2023. This was the first smile week held in Klerksdorp, in the City of Matlosana Local Municipality.
The North West Health MEC, Madoda Sambatha, said this year’s surgeries were preceded by two successful surgeries conducted on young girls for the first time at Tshepong Hospital in 2022. Sambatha said there is now an agreement with the Smile Foundation to jointly coordinate and ensure that the campaign yields better results on the numbers, as a specialist has been acquired.
The MEC said the purpose of the Smile Campaign is to help kids across the province, who are born with these open deformities, can speak and eat properly. The surgeries also give children with splits between the upper lip or both lips the ability to regain confidence. He further said they are doing both physical and emotional interventions. The process is moving because all the frustrations the patients had before surgery, which may include being ridiculed by the community, have become a thing of the past.
Residents of the North West Province with offspring born with cleft lip and palate were encouraged to refer their children to the nearest health facilities throughout the province to receive assistance. The potential patients for the surgery will no longer have to wait to be referred to health centres based in the Gauteng province.
Finance and Fundraising Manager from the Smile Foundation, Elaine Ngwenya, said the foundation has managed to assist five thousand and sixty-six children in seven provinces across the country, where they have partnered with seventeen academic hospitals.” We support children that need craniofacial reconstructive surgery together with children that burn survivors.”
Ngwenya further said children who do not get surgery early cannot eat and speak and will not live fulfilled lives. She explained that the Smile Foundation supplies cleft bottles, and they can support the children, to ensure that they get support from the time they are born until they no longer need their systems to ensure they live their lives.
Gifty Mensah from Vryburg, a parent to a child who has been operated on, said it had been a big challenge and a stressful life to have a child born with a cleft lip. “It was not easy for me because it was my first time having this experience, but now I’m so happy that my child is operated and thanks to the Smile Foundation, may God bless them,” she said.
Dimaktso Molale, who is an aunt to twelve-year-old Tlhalefo Sebuseng, who was referred to Tshepong by Ganyesa Hospital, said it had been a challenging twelve years for the boy as his peers were laughing at him.” At least he is now going to be able to speak. I can encourage parents not to keep their kids indoors, they should seek help for their kids,” she said.
Plastic surgeon at Tshepong Hospital, Dr Shashikant Agarwal, said one kid in seven hundred kids is born with this kind of abnormality, and most of them come from rural areas, but this is something that the children should not live the rest of their lives with. It is correctable through surgery. “At this stage, the main cause is unknown, but there are many factors. The common ones are teenage pregnancy, smoking, alcohol, and drug use during pregnancy, and the majority of these cases in the province come from Taung and Schweizer Reneke,” he said.
