Accordingly, health experts have stressed the need for urgent steps to curb the menace, and other envi­ronmental degradation activities that pose health risks to the population.

“We do know that heavy metals and some of these chemicals ad substances used in the galamsey activities can actually cause birth defects like Cleft so if you have a situation where your water bodies or your food sources get contaminated with a lot of these heavy metals, thechances of you getting children born with these abnormalities are higher.

“We do not have to wait for the worst to happen before we take action.It is important for all of us to take the necessary steps to make sure that our water and our food sources stay free from such contamination,” Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah,the Chief Executive Officer of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), cautioned.

Speaking at the launch of this year’s Cleft Awareness Week in Accra on Friday, Dr Ampomah dis­closed that Ghana records one case of Cleft lip or palate in every 1,000 babies born while globally, a child is born with the condition inevery three minutes.

Cleft, which is a gap or split in the upper lip or the roof of the mouth (palate), occurs during pregnancy when parts of a baby’s face do not join together properly resulting inchallenges with eating, breathing, hearing, and speaking.

Although Cleft lip or palate could also be geneticas a result of issues like vitamin deficiency, some medi­cations or toxins a pregnant woman may be exposed to, Dr Ampomah­said the condition could be surgical­ly corrected within 45 minutes.

He dismissed myths that children born with Cleft were a curse or evil, encouraging mothers to seek medi­cal attention when they give birth to babies with signs of the condition.

“I also like to caution all women who are in the fertile age that when you miss your period, don’t start just taking any medication anyhow. Check whether you are pregnant or not, so that you don’t end up ingest­ing the substance that will end up affecting your child,” he stated.

Mr Henry Quist, theActing Country Manager of Operation Smile-Ghana, a non-profit medical organisation, which provides free cleft care in the country, encouraged parents and guardians with Cleft children to take advantage of ‘op­eration smile’ outreaches to correct the anomaly.

According to him, surgery could be performed on babies with Cleft lip fromthree to six months and for those with palate, between nine and 12 months of birth.

“Immediately a child is born with this condition, the mother should try and get in touch with us. We use a comprehensive care approach for these surgeries,com­prising nutrition, language and speech therapies, oral health and surgical operations to not fix the physical deformities, but improve the overall quality of life for the children, boosting their self-es­teem and opening new opportu­nities for them,” he stated.

With five partner hospitals including theKorle Bu Teaching Hospital, Tamale Teaching Hos­pital and Polyclinic,Ho Teaching Hospital, Cape Coast Teach­ing Hospital and the Eastern Regional Hospital are currently under the ‘Operation Smile’ intervention, and the organisation in the next five years is seeking to perform about 2,700 life saving Cleft lip or palate surgeries across the country.