Sometimes it’s just nice to close the week with an old fashioned feel-good story. This week in Nanjing, a Tibetan baby with a congenital cleft lip and palate was discharged from hospital after the first operation to correct the condition. The operation was funded with financial aid.
The 6-month old baby girl from Tibet, Jin Mei (晋美), was given the go ahead to leave hospital on 23 June. In 8 to 10 months’ time, she will be back to have a second operation. Thereafter, she will be able to reshape her smile.
Baby Mei had the condition known as a unilateral cleft, or split, lip. And in Mei’s case, this was complicated by an accompanying cleft palate. Both conditions occur when tissues in an unborn baby’s face and mouth don’t fuse properly.
Although thankfully she will be too young to remember, baby Mei first opened her eyes when she was 3 days old. But the first thing she saw was other babies bursting into tears when they laid eyes on her.
Shen Weimin is chief physician of burn and plastic surgery in Nanjing Children’s Hospital. He explained that Mei’s condition was deteriorating since it affected her ability to eat and swallow. That her family had limited means and they were so far distant also did not help matters, reports The Paper.
However, with doctors in Tibet in touch with colleagues in Nanjing, the hospital made a successful application for relief funding so that the operation could take place. From beginning to end, the complete procedure took doctors 6 days.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “Normally, the tissues that make up the lip and palate fuse together in the 2nd and 3rd months of pregnancy. But in babies with cleft lip and cleft palate, the fusion never takes place or occurs only part way, leaving an opening”.
While the cleft lip and palate condition occurs in 1 to 2 per 1,000 births in the developed world, they still rank among the most common of birth defects.
Speaking with Jiangsu TV, baby Mei’s father expressed his sincerest of thanks to all the doctors and nurses who had assisted. He said he is now looking forward to his daughter growing up and commented on how she is getting prettier and prettier.
