CLEFT Chairman, Brian Sommerlad, recently visited Bangladesh for the first time in two years and was able to see the progress that the cleft team has made at the Sheikh Hasina Institute for Burns and Plastic Surgery since he was last there before the pandemic.

Apart from catching up with some familiar faces amongst both the cleft team and patients, and operating on some challenging patients with the team (see the website) Mr Sommerlad was also been able to hand-deliver two specialist cleft surgical sets, paid for with a generous CLEFT donation made last year. The moment was captured below and shows Mr Sommerlad passing the equipment to Dr Sen, National Director and Prof Kalam (4th from the left), the Director of the National Institute of Burns and Plastic Surgery, Dr Md Rabiul Karim Khan, Director of the Cleft and Craniofacial Centre (third from the right) and colleagues.

The surgical sets were made in the UK using Sheffield steel by S. Murray and Co and is specialist equipment required for cleft lip and palate repair. Surgical equipment is expensive to buy but CLEFT received a donation last year that paid for both sets outright. We were very pleased to be able to make the purchase for the cleft surgeons in Dhaka.