Peru: Comprehensive cleft care moves forward

Our Peruvian partner Dr Alberto Bardales is an excellent surgeon who has already treated more than 4,000 cleft children. The highlands of the Andes, where he grew up, are very close to his heart, as he knows that here the number of children born with cleft is especially high. We have been working with Dr Bardales and his Peruvian organization "Qorito" since 2006. As the terrain of Peru makes travelling quite difficult, he has established a network of doctors, nurses and contact persons to reach out to affected families. This enables him to regularly undertake operating campaigns even in the most remote areas. Thus we can operate on around 250 cleft children per year.

With the training in Europe of the psychologist Nely Nieves as a speech functional therapist Qorito can offer cleft patients and their families psychological and functional therapies. In these they tackle issues such as the stimulation of the correct positioning of the tongue or the training of the muscles of the neck, mouth and face. These are important puzzle pieces of comprehensive cleft care, as even children that have successfully undergone surgery sometimes retain pronunciation issues.

German federal government funding

In December 2016, with the help of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), we launched the three-year project "Improving the health care of cleft children through multidisciplinary treatment in Peru". The aim is to provide comprehensive care for patients with cleft lip and palate, including speech therapy as well as dental and orthodontic treatment.

The program, which will end in 2020, allowed the initiation of ongoing speech therapies as well as dental and orthodontic measures. Currently Qorito runs a drop-in centre in Lima, where these treatments take place.

Join the effort!

There is still much left to do before we can truly claim to offer full comprehensive care for cleft children in Peru. Besides the continuation of the operations we would like to intensify the educational work and further improve the aftercare. This approach is to be extended to other areas of the country over the coming years. For this we need strong financial partnerships.