UP plastic surgeon Dr. Subodh Singh performed 37k free cleft-palate surgeries, returned smiles to many kids

 

Plastic surgeon Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh with his successful patient(source:The New Indian Express)

Being a doctor is certainly a sacred profession. Where one is fully committed to do social service. But, the greed of money has also taken this divine  job under its control. Where financially disabled patients avoid taking medical treatment due to it's high cost.

Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh, a cleft surgeon,  hails from  Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, has not only returned smiles to 25,000 families through 37,000 free cleft-palate surgeries, but has also set a wonderful example of social service. This noble work  has earned him worldwide recognition, which he has been doing since 2000. He was among celebrated guests at the 2009 Academy Awards and the central court for the 2013 Wimbledon Men Singles Final.

Though he was a meritorious student but his life journey was also very difficult where he was forced to sell goggles and homemade soaps to support his family in Varanasi in 1979 along with his studies after his father's death. 

He started work with the Railway cancer Institute in 1994, his work involved reconstruction surgeries in cancer, especially that of the head and neck where he was  paid Rs 4000  as an honorarium, which was a great learning for him and has helped him a lot in his later years.

He established GS Memorial Plastic surgery hospital in 2001 in the memory of his father to provide state of the art reconstructive plastic surgery to the needy patients at a very affordable cost. After getting established as a cleft surgeon, Dr. Singh began a free treatment week to mark his father’s death anniversary, from 2002.

Today, Dr Subodh Singh has earned fame as a plastic cleft surgeon by performing free corrective surgeries (under the worldwide initiative Smile Train) on kids born with cleft lip/palate. 

Dr Singh says “In every cleft child who has come to me, I have visualised that little Subodh, who lost his father when he was only 13. My father  Gyan Singh and mother Giriraj Kumari (she died last year) taught me to serve the poor and live ethically. I feel God made me a plastic surgeon and not a businessman to serve a divine cause.” Due to inadequate medical treatment he had lost his father Gyan Singh, a railway clerk, in February 1979.

His noble deeds got noticed by Smile Train, a global initiative focused on cleft surgery. The association between Dr. Singh and Smile Train went on to provide free surgeries to more than 37,000 children and adults with disoriented palates. “In April 2004, we set a target of 2,500 cleft surgeries by December 2005. However, the Smile Train thought it was too ambitious and sought changes to bring it down to 500 by 2005-end. Fortunately, we crossed the suggested target of 500 by 2004 and ended up performing more than 2,500 surgeries by the end of 2005, Since 2008-09, we annually perform 4,000-plus free cleft surgeries under this initiative.” Dr. Singh told The New Indian Express. 

Read also:Kerala engineering student Reema Shaji made a mark in UGRAD

What is cleft lip and palate

Cleft lip and palate are genetic facial deformities that can occur separately or together. A cleft lip can range from a small notch in the lip, to a more severe gap in the lip that proceeds up to the base of the nose. Cleft lip may occur on one side, or both sides or the mouth. A cleft palate is where the two plates that form the roof of the mouth are not completely fused together, creating either a soft palate or a gaping hole in the roof of the mouth that exposes the mouth to the nasal cavity. Symptoms arise from the opening in the mouth, causing difficulty in speaking  and eating.

cleft-lip/palate baby

Dr Singh is a global trainer and speaker under the Smile Train initiative. His hospital in Varanasi has become a major centre where surgeons across the world come to train in cleft lip-palate surgeries. “When we started this initiative in April 2004, the average age of patients was 10.8 years. Now the average age is one year, which takes us closer to the target of surgically bringing smiles to all cleft children through corrective surgery as early as three months old.” His patients have spanned from three-month-olds to a 76-year-old woman in Bihar. His contribution to medical science by doing 50,000 plus cleft operations, 6000 burn cases surgery, training many doctors in his 27 years medical journey is undoubtedly  remarkable.

For the past eleven years, Dr. Subodh and his team has been holding various medical camps in the N-East and China borders where they offer treatment for a cleft in the nearby population.

The Smile Train project went on to inspire the making of a 39-minute documentary, Smile Pinki (2008), by Megan Mylan in 2008. The documentary shows how Dr Singh and his team transformed the life of an underprivileged little cleft girl Pinki Sonkar (from Rampur Dabahi Village of Mirzapur, East UP). It won the Oscar in the Best Short Documentary category. Both Pinki and Dr Singh were witness to the historic moment at the Academy Awards ceremony in the US in February 2009. Four years later, in Dr Subodh’s presence, Pinki Sonkar was bestowed the honour of flipping the coin for the pre-match toss of the Men’s Singles Final between Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic at Centre Court of Wimbledon.

In Dr Singh’s presence, his patient Pinki Sonkar was bestowed the honour of flipping the coin for the pre-match toss of the Men’s Singles Final between Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic at Centre Court of Wimbledon.

cleft girl Pinki Sonkar after surgery

Apart from that, Dr Subodh and his team have also performed 6,000 free extensive burn surgeries to reactivate lives of serious burn patients. His efforts inspired the making of Burned Girl (2015), the National Geographic documentary that won international awards for detailing the life of nine-year-old Ragini, whose childhood burns were treated surgically by Dr Singh.

Dr. Subodh’s other medical innovations are: Speech therapy for cleft patients. He also started and run telemedicine on cleft since 2014. Tracking and updating on cleft patients. Made online ECure telemedicine app on August 2020. It was initially for Covid but now for everything.         

Conclusion:

Cleft lip and palate malformations have a global occurrence of up to 1 in 500 live births worldwide and in India, an estimated one in every 800 children are born with cleft lip or palate. Various research studies and data reveal that about 35,000 children in India are born with a cleft lip and palate every year and sadly one out of ten of these children hardly get to see their first birthday. As a fall out of our ignorance on cleft, people face a myriad of problems in their life such as social ostracisation, prejudice and many more.

The Government of India has the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 which classifies physical disabilities of various parts of the body but unfortunately cleft lip and palate is not considered a disability. If somebody has a cleft, they may not be able to speak normally, eat  thus a sufficient reason to be included under the Act if we define ‘Disability’ in true sense.

Families whose loved ones are suffering from cleft lip or palate must know that cleft is treatable. Organizations like Smile Train and Deutsche Cleft-ABMSS have been providing free medical treatment for people with clefts. It is reasonably expected that the child’s life would be definitely better after the deformity was corrected. There can be seen a lot of improvement in terms of speech, feeding and most importantly appearance and self-confidence once the cleft lip/palate or both are corrected.