The Need for Help
Each year, hundreds of thousands of children are born with disfiguring cleft lips and palates. Most are too poor to afford corrective surgery. Without it, these children often live a life ostracized from society while enduring many health problems. Infants starve to death because they are unable to nurse. School-age boys and girls don’t attend school because of their humiliation. Even learning to speak becomes a challenge. Many cultures see the disfigurement as a curse. Marriage is often not a consideration. They need help!
Worldwide, oral-facial clefts occur one in 700 to 1,000 births. In China alone, more than 26,000 orphan boys and girls needing cleft lip and/or palate surgery have been abandoned to languish in an orphanage without hope of adoption.
The problem occurs because tissues of the lip and/or palate do not completely fuse together during the early stage of pregnancy. In the case of a cleft lip, this means a notch appears in the upper lip that can extend as far as the base of the nose. A cleft palate is even more problematic because there is a hole between the roof of the mouth and the nasal cavity. Since the lip and palate grow separately, a child may have a cleft lip, a cleft palate, or both. These are serious problems, but there is a solution.
What We Do
Hearing the cry of these desperately poor children, we have partnered with Operation Blessing to provide hundreds of life-changing surgeries, concentrating efforts in China, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
With your help we can do so much to change these youngsters' lives. In the United States, a typical cleft lip/palate surgery can cost more than $5,000. Due to minimal overhead and low medical costs in foreign countries, we can hold the cost to $500. In partnership with surgeons, hospitals, government agencies, and caring people like you, we provide free operations to give children living in poverty a chance for a better future. A gifted surgeon can erase traces of the deformity with little or no scaring. Moreover, a cleft lip or palate surgery enables a child to grow healthy and strong and develop normal speech and social interaction.
Be Part of the Answer
Please partner with us in bringing life-transforming surgeries to children in need. Thousands of boys and girls are waiting. But we can't help them alone, we need you!
Your gift of just $42 a month for 12 months—or a single gift of $500—will sponsor corrective surgery for a precious child.
As a sponsor, you will receive an information packet about the child whose surgery you sponsored and a photograph suitable for framing.
You can make a difference, call toll-free 1-800-759-0700 or make an online donation.
You can give a child the hope to face tomorrow – with a smile.
