Chronicle Editor
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
CHILDREN with burns, cleft lip, and cleft palate will now benefit from free plastic surgery that has been introduced at CURE Children’s Hospital in Bulawayo with more than 50 having benefited from the procedure since July this year.
Mr Jonathan Simpson, executive director at CURE Children’s Hospital, said they have enlisted the expertise of a musculofascial surgeon from the Philippines who was doing the surgeries.
“We work in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Child Care and United Bulawayo Hospitals, and we have been doing orthopaedics since we opened but we are introducing plastics (plastic surgery). We identified that plastic surgery is a big need in the country, there are very few plastic surgeons in the country and even fewer within the Ministry.
“What often happens when there is a skills shortage is to reignite the skills within the country and we are working with the Ministry to train surgeons and also provide service to the public.
“Plastic covers a broad spectrum of conditions or injuries, a majority of our clients have cleft lips, cleft palates, and burns but we also will be able to treat various other conditions. Very often, a child will have other conditions such as growths on their heads or face, things that a musculofascial,” said Mr Simpson.
“Until now it has only been various burns, children who stepped on fire or had a boiling pot of water falling over them, and other tragic situations where the child loses the ability to use their hands or even walk. The plastic surgeon has been doing that.
“We are excited as this opens us up to a new type of patient for the institution, we are quite confident that there are thousands of children who are waiting to receive this type of care, especially in this part of the country because there has not been a plastic surgeon in this part of the country for many years.
“If a child in Gwanda needed this surgery, the only hope was to travel to Harare but now they can come to CURE,” said Mr Simpson.
The executive director said just like any other procedure at the institution, plastic surgery was coming at no cost, and doors were opened to all children in Zimbabwe who have such conditions.
Mr Simpson said they have seen a lot of children with burns who were initially orthopaedic patients admitted to the hospital so they have them in their databases for plastic surgery.
Mr Simpson, however, said the biggest challenge had been information dissemination for people to know where to get help in Bulawayo.
He lamented that surgical intervention has not been a choice or option for many children who needed the service and several have been left out due to lack of information.
“A lot of people have never thought this is a possibility and now it’s a great privilege and responsibility for us to make sure that people know of the services that we offer,” he said.
Turning to cleft lip and palate, he said sometimes these come together or are separate as a child may have one or the other and even both surgeries.
He said on occasions children with such conditions have never gone to a hospital for assistance as the parent never imagines surgery as an option.
The burden of cleft lip and palate is significantly high in Zimbabwe hence the need to increase the accessibility of the services to the people.
A cleft is a gap or split in the upper lip and/or roof of the mouth (palate). The gap is there because parts of the baby’s face didn’t join together properly during development in the womb. The condition causes difficulty in the child’s feeding, hearing, speaking, or dental.
Children who are born with cleft lips have their ability to feed hindered by this condition and what almost always happens is that the children come malnourished to the institution.
“This is an alarming factor as one can only operate on a cleft lip or palate when a child is one year and older, part of the interventions that we do is nutrition programmes to feed the baby with special foods and formulas.
“We also assist with a free nifty feeding cup that enables the mother to feed the baby well. This is because when the child is failing to feed because of the condition, they deteriorate and lose weight so we do a lot of nutrition programmes first before the surgery is even done,” said Mr Simpson.
He further said there was a lot of stigma attached to children with cleft lip and palate together with their parents because the child would have been born physically different.
Mr Simpson said parents with children or who know of any person with a child in need of surgery must come forward to the hospital as they offer hope and a future without stigma for the children at no cost to the parents.
“There is often hesitancy for parents to travel to Bulawayo and the assumed costs of treatment, X-rays and many others but when they come through to us, all the costs are covered for them.
“We want to hear from them and put the children on our database and they will be notified when we have space for them to get the operation,” said Mr Simpson.
The executive director said they are in the process of hiring a medical officer to work under the surgeon so that he is trained to also do the procedures and decentralise the services.
Mr Simpson said they are also training nurses from hospitals in Bulawayo as they are also as an institution, mandated to train medical staff in various areas.
They have also trained surgeons from the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals and UBH that have been trained at CURE International who will then be able to do the same in their hospitals. — @NyembeziMu
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