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Overseas and Global Care

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Global Cleft and Craniofacial Care

There is global consensus that the best way to treat a child born with a cleft or craniofacial anomaly is a specialised team of trained professionals following a protocol of comprehensive care. Unfortunately, not all children born with a cleft or craniofacial condition around the world have equal opportunities to access this care.

The CFSGBI supports organisations committed to help populations in need in resource-constrained settings. It is the hope that raising awareness of populations in need and organisations set up to help them will enhance understanding, promote collaboration and encourage member engagement.

Find out more about global cleft care below and by clicking on the organisation logos...

 

The unmet need of global cleft care is likely to be highest in central Africa and southern Asia as shown on this map. We know from the Lancet commission that 6 billion people cannot access safe surgical care worldwide. More specifically for cleft, there is an estimated backlog of more than 600,000 people with an untreated cleft in low- and middle-income countries in 2014. With the COVID pandemic only exacerbating the shortages of resources, the stark reality is, that there is just too much work to do in too little time.

As a cause for hope, the provision of comprehensive cleft care in resource poor settings can have a transformative impact on the lives of patients and their families. There are multiple organisations globally set up specifically to do this and increasingly are working collaboratively to increase their impact. The CFSGBI supports efforts to improve comprehensive cleft care in low- and middle-income countries and aims to facilitate the collective sharing of experience to promote this aim. 

 

 

                                         

                                    

 

 

Terouz Pasha is a Junior Doctor and Illustrator from London. She specialises in medical and anatomy inspired art, drawing from her own background in Medicine.

Terouz kindly created this piece for the CFSGBI to represent people affected by cleft and craniofacial conditions from around the world.

Find out more about Terouz and her work here