Staff Correspondent

Health and Family Welfare Minister Sardar Md. Sakhawat Hossain has promised to implement a national program for the rehabilitation of children born with cleft lips and palates in the country.

He made this commitment on Wednesday night while speaking as the chief guest at a gala dinner organized at the Gulshan Club in Dhaka on the occasion of the "8th International Friendship Medical Mission of Smile Asia in Dhaka."

The event was organized to celebrate the successful "Commitment of a New Smile" program, jointly initiated by Smile Asia, the Ministry of Public Administration, Dhaka Bank, and Sajeda Foundation under the initiative of the Government Employees Hospital. Through this medical mission, free surgeries were successfully performed on 69 children with cleft lips and palates.

The event was attended by Dhaka Bank PLC Managing Director and CEO Osman Ershad Faiz, Sajeda Foundation CEO Zaheda Fizza Kabir, Smile Asia Secretary General Abhimanyu Talukdar, and Government Employees Hospital Director General (Additional Secretary) Md. A. Razzak Sarker, among others. Expert surgeons, anesthesiologists, therapists, and healthcare workers from domestic and international medical teams also participated.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Sardar Md. Sakhawat Hossain said that anyone's heart would break witnessing the helplessness and emotional distress of children born with congenital cleft lip or palate conditions. However, the expert team of physicians, anesthesiologists, and nurses has brought smiles back to the faces of these children. With the full cooperation of the Government Employees Hospital, successful surgeries were completed for these children by this foreign specialist team.

Calling upon Smile Asia and Sajeda Foundation to undertake similar programs again, the Minister stated that if Smile Asia returns in the future, the government will transform this initiative into a national program to serve the people of the country on an even broader scale.

Praising the talent and capabilities of the country's physicians, the Minister noted that domestic doctors at the Burn Unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital have innovated methods enabling skin to be delivered to remote districts within 4 to 6 hours to treat burn patients. Despite various limitations, physicians continue to make remarkable contributions.

He further mentioned that during recent flooding caused by excessive rainfall across 11 districts, doctors and health workers forgot about their leave and worked day and night to treat post-flood diarrhea, cholera, skin diseases, and snakebites.