By Egufe Yafugborhi

PORT HARCOURT – EXPERT surgeon at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Dr Benjamin Kejeh, says he will continue to carry out life changing surgeries on cleft or palates patients for as long as his strength can carry him despite not being paid as a Smile Train volunteer because the opportunity made him know how to carry out the operation.

Kejeh, South South Coordinator of the Smile Train, the global charity offering free cleft treatment, who declared the personal commitment yesterday at a stakeholders forum in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, emphasised that being able to acquire the cleft operation knowledge free of charge and passing it on to upcoming medical specialists has been more valuable than any amount he could have been paid for doing cleft surgeris.

He said, “I’ve been a surgeon for years, but when I got involved with Smile Train 15 years ago, I never knew how to carry out this operation. But several times they have taken us on training and taught us. I have been to Kenya, been to Ghana, Ethiopa, and more places.

“They would gather Nigerians, others involved in the cleft procedure across Africa and begin to teach how to do the operation. They send books, send videos on experts carrying out the operating on a cleft patient. We read and watch. And that is how I developed my expertise on cleft operation.

“Since then I have been doing it and teaching the younger ones. Because UPTH is a training center, some young ones come in and after five, six years, they become specialists, tapping from our experiences. As those behind us are growing other young ones keep coming in and we continue to pass down the knowledge.

“Aside capacity building, they (Smile Train) have also provided a lot of facilities. There is a purpose built bus they donated to us, to move patients about so they don’t suffer because of transport. They have provided operation light, anaesthetics machine.

They have given pulse meter which if you put it on the hand, you know when a patient is dying. Everything we have asked to make our operations easy they have given us and they are ready to give more so that we can repair as many clefts as possible.

“So even when we don’t collect money, they don’t pay us, just that love they display challenges us. That if people who don’t belong to Africa are sacrificing money for African children, like Nigerian children from my village and yours, to be treated free, why can’t I make out time to be in the theatres to do the procedures?”

With over 700 cases carried out in South South so far, the North with higher figures and still counting, Kejeh urged more medical experts to volunteer their expertise to increase the intervention in ensuring that no child born with cleft suffers.

On the weight of financial burden Smile Train lifts from parents of cleft children, Kejeh noted, “Some persons have done this surgery for N800,000, some more than one million in private hospitals at full charge.”