For six years, we partnered with the Amity Foundation, a Chinese voluntary organization, and the Jiangsu Stomatological Hospital (JPSH) in Nanjing.
Our partners successfully established a team approach to managing cleft lip and palate and provided orthodontics, speech therapy, counselling, primary and secondary cleft surgeries.
Wang Binbing, the speech therapist at JPSH, now dedicates 75% of her time to providing speech therapy. The team is also reaching out to parents and communities to create cleft lip and palate awareness.
The team has excelled at bringing the idea of team care to China. In December 2013, our partnership with Amity and JPSH came to a scheduled conclusion.
The project continues to promote the development of the multi-disciplinary team and to make high quality service available to the patients from Jiangsu and its nearby provinces.
In 2013, they focused on speech therapy and supporting parents. Some other highlights include:
- 11 patients received Nasoalveolar molding (NAM), a nonsurgical method of reshaping the gums, lip and nostrils before cleft lip and palate surgery
- 13 patients are undergoing regular speech therapy: Parents are keen to continue with this treatment because they saw their improvement in their child’s speech over time. The project also made a transportation subsidy available to poor families, which reduced the family burden.
- 1 patient received orthodontic treatment
- 13 patients received Aveolar bone graft surgery
- 15 patients received lip repair surgery and 30 patients received palate repair surgery
- 2 surgeons and 1 Amity staff attended the 12th International Congress on Cleft Lip/Palate and Related Craniofacial Anomalies in Orlando, Florida with the support of TF
- A camp for parents was carried out in August and 13 families attended. The youngest child was 2 months old and the oldest child was 12 years old. From the interview and quick survey, all the parents found it useful and they want the hospital to host more of these because they valued the information and support from the group. Amity hopes to continue this family support.
- Our Partners report that parents still show more enthusiasm for surgeries than for rehabilitative treatments because it is seen as a more rapid fix.
Amity hopes to continue to educate more parents on the need for rehabilitation in future.