Agartala, Sept 29 (TIWN) Its jawans guard the India’s long borders in rain and shine, day and night. Now the troopers of Border Security Force (BSF) is touching the lives of people in the east and northeast in a rather unique way – aided by the US-based international medical NGO ‘Smile Train’ treating children with cleft lips and palates to bring smiles to their faces and eliminating the social stigma.

Rotary Club of Kolkata and BSF Wives Welfare Association coordinating the surgeries, which are performed free, would normally cost Rs.40,000 to Rs.50,000.

BSF’s Tripura frontier inspector general Rajni Kant said : “During a two-day medical camp on Friday and Saturday, 14 people, including children and aged persons, with cleft lips and palates have been operated by the doctors at the BSF’s Composite Hospital at the Tripura frontier headquarters at Salbagan.”

He said : “Earlier in a similar medical camp on June 21 nine such cases were surgically cured free of cost by a medical team from Kolkata, giving the children a new lease of life and a smile on their faces. They are now almost leading a normal life.”

The BSF IG said that similar such surgical-medical camps have been held in West Bengal and Meghalaya frontiers with Bangladesh, which shares over 4095 km border with India.

“After the surgery of the cleft lips and palates, the face and the personality of the individual concerned have been totally changed. The BSF and its co-organisations are taking appropriate pre and post operative steps and measures for the help of the patients.”

Also supported by BSF Wives Welfare Association, the surgeries, which are performed free, would normally cost Rs.40,000 to Rs.50,000.

Accompanied by Rotary Club of Kolkata representative Chandra Mukherjee, Mishra said that prior to these surgical medical camps, BSF teams reached the remotest corners of Tripura’s border with Bangladesh to identify cases and brought them to frontier headquarters for screening.

Funds for organising surgical and medical camps are being given by ‘Smile Train’ while the Rotary Club of Kolkata is coordinating the entire programme.

The BSF official said : “One out of 700 children born with cleft lips and palates. According to the experts, this is a genetic problem.”

USA’s New York based ‘Smile Train’ is an international charity helping children with cleft lips. Founded in 2000 by Brian Mullaney and Charles B. Wang, it has performed more than 300,000 cleft surgeries in 80 of the world's poorest countries.

Cleft lip and palate is a birth-defect which can derail the victim’s life due to social stigmas.

Accoding to the Rotary Club of Kolkata official Chandra Mukherjee, eastern India has over 145,000 cases of people with cleft lip and palate while in India the number would be around seven lakh.

Northeast India has the highest number of cases of cleft lips and palates.

According to experts, about 30,000 children in India are born with cleft lips and palates every year and less than 50 percent of them go for treatment.