One by one, they walk in the door, some smiling, some crying, some thankful, some frightened. They all have one thing in common: the need for help. One thing they don't have in common are similar disabilities. This is an experience one will have when entering the St. Andrew's Children's Clinic in Nogales, Ariz., which provides free medical services for underprivileged children from Sonora, Mexico.

Among the disabilities found at the clinic is cleft palate, a birth defect in which the roof of the mouth is not completely joined, leaving a gap, or "cleft".

In 2006, St. Andrew's offered its services to over 2000 Mexican children and infants, and of those were 35 children who needed cleft palate surgery.

Cleft palate occurs once every 600-800 births and can usually be corrected at birth, with an operation that leaves minor physical evidence a cleft palate was actually there. However, the children at St. Andrew's never had the chance to receive the surgery at birth, so those who are not infants have to go through a much more grueling process in order for their cleft palates to be fixed.

St. Andrew's often sends these patients to the International Center of Medicine (CIMA) hospital in Hermosillo, Mexico, which has worked closely with the clinic for many years. The preferred place to go for cleft palate surgery, due to lower travel time and costs for the children and their families, CIMA preformed 30 to 40 surgeries in 2005 alone.

Some cleft palates are more severe than others, but the size of the cleft does not determine this. Rather, the location of the cleft indicates the long term impacts. Symptoms of cleft palate are distinctive facial deformities, difficulties with speech pronunciation, and feeding problems (mainly in the case of infants).

Cleft palates are genetic but recent research is being done on the affect of environmental factors as well.

For more information on cleft palates, visit these nonprofit sites: Operation Smile and the Cleft Palate Foundation.


To see what a cleft palate looks like, watch this video about a young girl in Albequerqe whose cleft palate was able to be fixed at birth: