SmileTrain
Sagari Bellamkonda
Hello Everyone,
I am Sagari and am friends with Santosh of TrueIndia. We did our under graduation at Vignan in Hyderabad. I am reaching out to you to help me in a journey that I started. I have followed TrueIndia work for over a year and contributed to it. I thought it would be helpful to share my plans with a few more committed people. I would like to write a few lines about what I am doing and in which way you can help me.
I have been donating to a number of charity organizations and SmileTrain is one of them. My first donation to them was in 2007 and I continue doing so. SmileTrain is a nonprofit organization that only focuses on Cleft surgery. Since, many of us do not have an idea of Cleft lip, I am attaching pictures of 2 babies with cleft lip (before and after surgery). please see the attached SmileTrain.docx.
Cleft lip is called GrahanaMorri in Telugu. People believe that cleft lip is because of kids born during inauspicious time or that the celestial objects were not in the right alignment when baby was born. They believe that they are cursed and it cannot be cured. Here is the real reason for cleft lip. Clefts occur very early in the development of the fetus when many women do not even know that they are pregnant It occurs when certain body parts and structure do not fuse together during the development of the fetus. Clefts can involve the lip, the roof of the mouth, and the soft tissue in the back of the mouth. Here is the good news!
Cleft surgery is a simple outpatient procedure for 45 min and costs around Rs. 10,000. Smile Train does the surgery for free of cost.
Now that I gave a brief idea about Smile Train and their free cleft surgery, I can tell you about my next step. Smile Train partnered with 7 hospitals in Andhra Pradesh.
Hyderabad
- Durgabai Deshmukh Hospital & Research Centre, VidyaNagar.
- Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences – NIMS, Panjagutta.
- Owaisi Hospital & Research Centre, Kanchanbagh.
Guntur - St. Joseph's Hospital
Vijayawada - Vijetha Hospital
Rajamundry - GSL Medical College & General Hospital
Visakhapatnam - Seven Hills Hospital
My hometown is Guntur and I know 5 to 6 villages that are an hour drive from Guntur. I have spread the message around by taking the help of my extended family who live in villages. The difficult part of finding the kids is, they are too shy to come out of their home and so we may not see them playing around with other kids or in school because their face looks very different from other kids. I feel that this simple surgery will give them a second chance in their life and they can come out of their own boundaries that they have built because of the physical deformation.
To summarize the help that I need and that I greatly appreciate from all of you
- Just keep a look out for kids with cleft lip in your day to day life .
- If you find a kid, please take their contact information and explain their parents how you can help them and most importantly mention that cleft lip is an outpatient procedure for 45 min and free of cost.
- Send an email to me (sagari.be...@gmail.com) or you can call me(001-817-727-0497) with the kids contact information. I forgot to mention, I live in Dallas, TX.
- I would then take an appointment with the doctor and take care of the remaining steps.
Together, we can make many kids smile, lead a normal life and give their childhood back to them. Let me know if you have any questions regarding clefts or the surgery. I will get back to you with the best of my knowledge.
Thanks for all the help.
Sagari