Adcock Ingram is the latest partner to this year’s smile week which begins on Monday 4 October in the Free State capital. Some of these young patients include an infant from Kroonstad, born with a cleft lip and palate, conjoined fingers and hydrocephalus which is a serious condition in which an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid occurs in the ventricles of the brain resulting in a rapid increase in pressure within the skull.

The Smile Foundation has upped psychosocial support for the parents of children living with facial abnormalities, who are undergoing reconstructive surgery in different parts of the country in 2021. The organisation has introduced a support group for parents known as ‘Cleft Friends’ which aims to have mothers speak on their respective experiences caring for children with facial abnormalities and possibly help others in the process. The Smile Foundation’s Operations Executive Director, Moira Gerszt, previously told OFM News in 2020 one of the biggest challenges the foundation faced during the coronavirus pandemic was that they couldn’t help all of the children that needed surgeries. According to Gerszt many parents faced increased anxiety during the hard lockdown and parents had to be provided counselling telephonically.

The Smile Foundation was only able to resume surgeries in November 2020 due to the pandemic. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Smile foundation, Hedley Lewis, previously expressed his gratitude to the medical fraternity for their hard work during the pandemic. “We just want to thank the frontline: the surgeons, the doctors, the hospital management for getting us to a position that we could actually have this opportunity, for the curve to have been reduced” said Lewis passionately.

OFM News