News / Cleft Lip and Palate Services

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The RPSB Unit is helping to establish comprehensive cleft lip and palate management in West Africa. The main function of the Units is to perform surgical repair to large numbers of children and adults with cleft deformity and to train surgeons.

Presently, provision of comprehensive cleft management services is of low priority in Ghana with limited numbers or children with cleft deformity receiving treatment here and even less elsewhere in africa.


Cleft is poorly reported, few statistics are kept and many children with CLP are being hidden, ostracised and badly neglected.

Awareness-raising and education are required to address the situation, and attempts have commenced to widely inform the population that CLP can be successfully treated and that it is not an "evil-related"condition.

Information posters, like the one below, placed in clinics and hospitals helps raise awareness.

A CLP management programme commenced in Ghana early 2003 with the long-term aim of forming a well trained integrated Cleft Lip and Palate team comprising plastic surgeons, speech therapists, ENT specialists, orthodontists and others.

Our cleft surgeons are:

Opoku Ampomah
Pius Agbenorku
Emmanuel Adu
Albert Paintsil
Fabian Mork
Tony Laing

Ruth Arthur, aged 2 (below, top-left) proudly displays her well reconstructed lip in October 2003, along with other satisfied cleft patients in RPSB Unit, Accra: