News

This Saturday, October 1, is "Foundations Day". This day was created by the Association of German Foundations to raise awareness of the important charitable work of foundations in Germany and Europe. We, too, are pleased to be able to count many foundations among the supporters of our work, in addition to numerous companies and many, many private donors.

Today, September 11, 2022, we celebrate a milestone birthday: Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe turns 20! On September 11, 2002, Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe e.V. was founded by a group of passionate individuals in a living room in Freiburg. Our goal since day one: to provide comprehensive and reliable help for children with cleft lip and palate in developing countries. This is what we work for - with passion, creativity and all our strength.

The DCKH Annual Report 2021 is now out! Read about the developments the year 2021 brought to our aid for children with cleft lip and palate. It was an exciting year, with new records in the number of children we were able to provide with surgery for their cleft lip or palate, paving the way for a new life for them. We also saw much exciting progress in our projects.

The twins Wilian and Yeison were born in 2013 with bilateral cleft lips and cleft palates. Their family makes their living with farming. Like many Quechua-speaking residents in the remote mountainous regions of Peru, they are poor. They could not have afforded to pay for their sons' treatment on their own. Thanks to our donors and the doctors of our Peruvian partner organization Qorito, the twins can now live a life without cleft.

People with cleft lip and palate often consider terms such as "harelip" or their many equivalents in different languages as demeaning and insulting. Nevertheless, these words persist in everyday language use. Read about the background behind these terms and the importance of how to talk about clefts and people with cleft.

On March 28, a boy with cleft lip and palate is born in an indigenous tribe in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. He is named Maui. Like many parents surprised by the birth of a cleft baby, his parents are shocked, and because of his cleft palate, the mother is unable to breastfeed him. On his third day of life, Maui is abandoned by the parents at a fireplace and left to his fate. But his story takes a turn for the better.

DCKH cleft lip and palate project country Pakistan is currently suffering under disastrous floods. As much as a third of the country has been hit. Millions have been forced to flee and lost their homes, crops and livelihoods. We are deeply saddened and hope for quick relief for our friends and project partners in Pakistan and all their compatriots.

After a surgery hiatus of several months, we have good news from our project country Afghanistan: Our cleft surgeon in Mazar-e-Sharif is working again! She has already provided free surgery for nine children with cleft. We hope for many more cleft surgeries in the coming months and that we will be able to resume our work for cleft children in Afghanistan at full capacity and all project locations soon.

In late March 2022, after long preparations, many delays and problems overcome, our new project in the Horn of Africa region finally kicked off with our first mission to treat cleft children in Garowe in northern Somalia. It was an exciting occasion not only for our many patients who get to start a new life without cleft, but also for us. Many members of our international aid network came together to make the project possible.

The parents of our cleft children are always full of gratitude. When their child is born with cleft, they often do not know what to make of the malformation, much less that it can be treated. And even if they do - most of our little patients come from the poorest of backgrounds. Their parents could never afford the operation. It is an unimaginable happiness for them to learn that their children can receive qualified treatment, and free of charge even. This wonderful, touching film from our Bolivian aid project captures these special moments of happiness.

This film, made for our Pakistani partner organization, the Al-Mustafa Welfare Societey, by the father of one of our patients, shows scenes from our work in Karachi. From here, our senior surgeon Prof. Ashraf Ganatra treats cleft children from poorest families. He operates the children from Karachi at the Al Mustafa Medical Center. In order to reach the many needy families living outside the city, he also regularly heads out to local provincial hospitals to treat cleft patients there.

As a baby, Dat fell victim to an unqualified surgery. Probably inexperienced doctors severed important arteries during his palate surgery in Vietnam. The result: a large hole in the palate that massively affects the boy's life. We brought him to Germany to get reconstructive surgery. An individual case that due to the financial and human cost must remain an exception. In this video, we want to draw attention to the risks of "safari surgery" as opposed to sustainable development aid.