New Delhi: Pinki Sonkar's, the child actor of documentary film
It was a birth defect, a cleft lip that brought Pinki the world's attention, through the Oscars, a far cry from the bylanes of Mirzapur.
The 8-year-old is one of India's lucky children. However, there are 1 million kids waiting in the wings for a simple surgery. One in 2 gets the treatment they need.
The same group that arranged for Pinki's surgery, Smile Train, is helping children like her get treatment.
Three-month-old Arjun from Delhi, waiting for surgery for his cleft lip, already faces problems in breathing and eating, let alone smiling.
Arjun's father says, “When he was born, even we were shocked. Though we are his parents, we were also disheartened. People said he is like this because of solar eclipse. So we are getting him treated now. Otherwise, when he grows up, kids will tease him at school.”
Experts say that every three hours a child is born in India with a cleft lip and if the condition is not corrected by the age of 2, the child is likely to develop serious speech defects.
Around 35 per cent of children with cleft lip are born in India, but why are they more vulnerable?
Doctors to patient ratio is bad. The awareness levels low and women are undernourished during pregnancy. Children, more than often, have low haemoglobin levels that even if they come for surgery, they cant be operated.
The surgery itself is not risky. Doctors say the approximately 45 minute procedure has a 100 per cent success rate.
The cost is around 10,000 rupees for a single cycle of surgery to get any one of these children to smile like Pinki.
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