Smile Train rolls into St James
MONTEGO BAY, St James — Fifteen-year-old American high school student Sivani Alla, a Smile Train ambassador, recently journeyed from her native land to Jamaica to seek partnerships, in an effort to assist children affected by cleft lips and palates with corrective surgeries.
“One of the things we are trying to do in Jamaica is get partnerships with doctors and hospitals so that we can carry out surgeries on children who we identify with cleft lips and cleft palates,” the American student revealed.
“Most often these children cannot afford surgery, they don’t have the proper facilities, the resources, to get the surgery that they need. They can’t breathe properly, they can’t eat properly, they can’t speak properly. They can’t hold a job, they can’t go to school.”
A cleft lip and/or palate is a birth defect (congenital) of the upper part of the mouth. A cleft lip creates an opening in the upper lip between the mouth and nose and a cleft palate occurs when the roof of the mouth has not joined completely.
Smile Train is an international children’s charity that provides free cleft lip and palate repair surgery to children in over 85 countries.
The young student, whose ambition is to follow in the footsteps of her father, Dr Vijah Alla, and become a medical practitioner, noted that during a visit to Chubby Cheeks Nursery in St James, she managed to heighten the awareness of the condition to teachers and children there.
She added that after returning home, she will continue to raise funds to undertake surgeries on persons who have been identified with cleft lips and cleft palates.
She said with the assistance of her family, she has so far raised US$8,000, which should be enough to fund surgeries for about 20 children.
According to young Alla, so far Montego Bay- based Dr Guna Muppuri has been receptive about partnering with Smile Train in Jamaica.
She added that she wants to partner with local medical personnel to carry out “mass screening and find out how many of them (children) have the problem, then we can deal with them”.
