GSR Institute brings smile to kids with cleft lips

The next time you pass by a child with a cleft lip and if you want to bring smile back to his/her face, just dial the number of GSR Institute of Facial Plastic Surgery located at Saidabad in Hyderabad.

A special bus run by the institute would pick up the child and his parents from anywhere in the state and take him to the hospital for a free surgery.

The institute, which functions from its own premises since May 2005, was established through the efforts of the Hyderabad Cleft Society and the Cleft-Children International (CCI), a Zurich-based organisation working for the care and cure for children with cleft lip and palate.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of a one-day national symposium on corrective surgery for vascular and craniofacial malformations of the head and neck region, Srinivas Gosla Reddy, director, GSR Institute of Facial Plastic Surgery, said, "We perform around 120 craniofacial surgeries on children every month and about 1,500 children every year. We want to reach out to those children in the state who cannot afford the surgery due to financial constraints."

Apart from the mental hardship the otherwise normal children suffer, they cannot eat, breathe and speak properly, Reddy said. "We have tied up with district collectors, Velugu groups and schools in the state," he said.

According to the CCI, every year around 32,000 children are born with facial clefts in India and over 15 specialised cleft centres are needed to carry out a corrective surgery on all of them. At present, there are four specialised cleft centres in India working in partnership with the CCI.

The CCI entered into its first partnership with Justice K S Hegde Hospital in Mangalore in 2002, with the Hyderabad Cleft Society and the Meenakshi Ammal Trust Hospital in Chennai in 2003 and the BSES MG Hospital in Mumbai in 2004.