- In East Java alone, more than 1,500 infants are born each year with cleft lip and palates
- Many surgical teams in East Java provide free surgery for a limited number of cleft lip & palate children every year. Only 10% of these infants are operated on in time (3-month mark). The remaining 90% are children who have passed the 3-month mark, with many well into the school years
- It is estimated that 85-90%* of new cleft infants are born in/at the lowest social economic/educational level
. * Source: www.widesmiles.org
- Clefts seem to be at least in part related to ethnicity, occurring most often among persons of Asian, Latino and Native American descent (1:500), Next are persons of European ethnicity (1:700); least often, persons of African ethnicity (1:1,000)
- In our research of 35 mothers of cleft infants, we found 95% of them had major problems feeding their babies and the problems increased when they tried to handle these problems by themselves
Cleft Palate Foundation, USA