Edition 106

CLEFT Update

July was a very busy month for us as we celebrated our change to become a national charity. Whilst CLAPA is still the UK's parent support charity for children born with cleft lip and palate, CLEFT aims to be the UK's leading charity funding research into the causes and treatment of the condition. We also continue to support teams in lower and middle income countries and we hope that with our new, expanded team that we will be able to work in more countries now. The International Steering Committee will be meeting in October to discuss the possibilities of working in Sierra Leone and Mozambique. These are countries with very poor resources to treat cleft patients so there are many ways we might be able to help, from training surgeons to helping build a more sustainable future in cleft care.

Whilst August has been a quiet month, work is still being done behind the scenes. Covid is still having a terrible impact and our colleagues in Bangladesh are unable to see many cleft patients who mainly come from rural areas, where Covid has badly hit. The team is doing what they can: Fairooz (speech and language therapist) has been managing to treat patients using telehealth and Dr. Papon (cleft surgeon) has been carrying out some really useful research using retrospective data. CLEFT has funded another piece of research into the likely causes of craniofacial clefts and this is ongoing. The team hopes to present some of their papers at the International Cleft meeting which will be held in Edinburgh in 2022. Not only are they producing some important research in their own right but this also demonstrates the value of creating a well-trained team focusing on cleft care.

Fundraising

The Royal Parks Half Marathon has been a regular event for CLEFT for several years but this will be the last year we take part in it for a while as we look for new events to participate in. We have two places left to fill - would you or anyone you know be interested in filling these places? The race is taking place on the 10th October but the closing date for registrations is this Friday, 3rd September at midnight. The registration fee is £75 and we are asking for each runner to raise a further £275.

 
There will be a few competitions on the day (and prizes!) and we’ll also be holding an auction after dinner. We will be sending the list of auction items in the next couple of weeks so if you would like to bid on anything before the evening, you will have the opportunity to do so.

If you are a golfer and would like to bring a team of 4, we still have a couple of places left. You can book by clicking the button below.

It may be difficult to think that our summer is nearly over, let alone to consider events at Halloween and Christmas time quite yet. We won't say much more right now other than we do have a few special events lined up, including a Celebrity Christmas Quiz. If you didn't take part in our quiz back in July, it was a lot of fun and places for this new one will go quickly.

Watch this space for more information!

Did you know...?

One of our core philosophies is to invest in and give value to people by sharing knowledge around the world, providing stronger foundations for future generations. One of the ways we can do this is by sending training videos to surgeons to learn from. We send approximately 30 USB sticks out every month across the globe. The training videos were made by cleft surgeon and CLEFT Chair, Mr Brian Sommerlad and are sent out free of charge on request. 

DONATE £5, £10 or £30 to help either fund research or support one of our international centres.