We would like to present to you a beautiful donation for our little patients with cleft lip and palate: The Munich-based painter Hans J. Regier has donated the complete proceeds from the sale of one of his paintings to support our work. We are overjoyed and say thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

The ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, who died in 1324 BC, is a historical figure known to many for the sensational artwork found in his tomb, including a spectacular death mask. What is less known is that the young deceased, like many people living today, was born and lived with a cleft palate.

There is still no reliable method to prevent the development of a cleft lip and palate. This is in no small part due to the fact that there is not one clear cause: Cleft has a multifactorial origin. One important factor is genetic. Here too, however, the situation is not clear-cut - there is no such thing as "the cleft gene". A group of researchers at the University of Bonn has now added to our knowledge about cleft by investigating the 98% of genes that do not themselves directly contain blueprints for proteins.

Today we would like to introduce you to Ashmita. The little girl was born on May 01, 2021 with a cleft lip in the village of Pachaura in India. Ashmita's parents were shunned and stigmatized by their families and acquaintances because of their daughter's deformity. They feared that their daughter would face a difficult life of social exclusion.

Julio is born with cleft lip and palate in Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. Iquitos is the largest city on the Peruvian Amazon and is not accessible by land, only by boat across the Amazon, or by plane. Health care here is poor, there is no way for him to get surgery for his cleft lip and palate. But thanks to our donors, Julio was able to get the help he needs.

In June 2020, Cristóbal is born with a cleft lip and palate in El Alto, Bolivia. His mother takes care of Cristobal and his two siblings and the household. His father's meager salary as a bricklayer is just enough to survive. At the clinic where Cristóbal was born, his parents received no information about his cleft lip and palate or treatment options, and the couple's family did not support them either. But Cristóbal's story has a happy ending.

Helping the children with cleft malformation treated in our cleft treatment project in Karachi live their best lives is the overarching goal of our three-year BMZ funding project. To evaluate the project, a team from Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe traveled to Pakistan in early 2023. An exciting trip with intense, touching impressions of the successful work done by our Pakistani partners.

Many people in Sierra Leone are affected by extreme poverty. This also means very poor conditions and little hope for treatment for those who give birth to a child with cleft lip here. Now our long-time volunteer supporters and Africa project leaders, the highly qualified surgeons Dr. Dr. Oliver Blume and Gunther Au-Balbach, visited the country to establish contacts for a new cleft project and to provide care to the first patients.

Our help for children with cleft lip and palate would be impossible without our network of helpers. In addition to many local surgeons and other medical professionals in the partner countries, this network also includes volunteers who support our local teams with passion and skill. An intercultural exchange that is enriching for both sides. The work in our project country Vietnam has been accompanied since 2016 by the Munich doctors Dr. Denys J Loeffelbein and Dr. Daniel Lonic. In December 2022, the two visited their colleagues and friends in Vietnam again for the first time since the pandemic.

Our new project to help children with cleft lip and palate in Colombia begins with a very unusual case. Maui was born with a cleft lip and palate. His parents belong to an indigenous people and do not know how to get him the help he needs. By a happy coincidence, Julia, a Swiss woman living in Colombia, is a neighbor of the family and offers to help. In search of treatment options, she comes across Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe.

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.