Hospital begins free cleft lip surgery

"The surgeries are done free and the campaign will continue till March 3," Director of the hospital Sreejoy Patnaik said today.

He said every year more than 35,000 children are born in India with cleft lip.

Facial clefts could be corrected with a simple procedure lasting for an hour with good results, he said.

"We took it up as a challenge and decided to perform the surgeries free since clefts are completely treatable but majority of them fail to undergo surgeries due to poverty," Patnaik said.