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Cleft lip surgical tool simulator to be showcased at WISH in Qatar

Healthcare innovators have been hard at work inventing new tools for the betterment of the sector.

The recent innovation, that will definitely put a smile to a lot of people’s faces, literally, is the cleft lip and palate and palate surgical tool.

A cleft lip is a physical split or separation of the upper lip into two sides and appears as a narrow opening or gap in the skin of the upper lip.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a cleft lip and cleft palate are birth defects that occur when a baby’s lip or mouth do not form properly during pregnancy.

Each year, around the world, 170,000 children are born with cleft lip and/or palate - one in every 700 births - making it one of the most common of all birth defects.

Smile Train has developed a Virtual Surgery Simulator and it will be one of the Healthcare showcases at the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) on February 17 and 18 in Doha, Qatar.

The virtual surgery simulator will be showcased as one of the world’s newest and most ground-breaking healthcare innovations.

 “We’re excited to share the Simulator and our sustainable training model with experts tackling some of the most pressing and serious global health challenges facing governments, health systems and populations,” said Susannah Schaefer, CEO of Smile Train.

WISH said that the cleft repair surgery is simple, and the transformation is immediate.

Smile Train’s sustainable model provides training and funding to empower local doctors in over 85 developing countries to provide free cleft repair surgery in their communities.

The Virtual Surgery Simulator will be among 19 other innovations from people in the healthcare sector across the world that will be presented to 1000 of world’s leading healthcare experts at the WISH summit.

 

Watch video of a child with cleft lip: