Cleft-centre Chennai

The Cleft-centre in Chennai is the third centre organised by Cleft-Children International CCI and is under the directorship of Prof. Dr. Manikandhan. It is part of the Meenakshi university and has its own children's playroom with a TV set. This allows films to be shown to children in their own regional dialect, which helps the children in their speech therapy and therefore in their recovery: it also helps educate people and dispel their fears. To date 8,564 treatments have been performed.
 
Chennai suffered a massive flood last year, the largest in 100 years. Everything was flooded, schools and hospitals were closed, the water reached a height of 4 feet (approx. 120 cm), meaning  that Chennai was cut off from the outside world for several weeks, because nothing worked anymore, no electricity, no telephone, no internet etc.
After the floods had drained away it was time for the clean-up, which also took many weeks.
This flood can be seen in the number of annual operations, which fell significantly compared with those planned. The roads were partially impassable, i.e. the patients from outside the city could not get into the city for many weeks to reach the Cleft-centre.
 

Working together with the Rajy Vidya Mission, five camps were organised in the state of Andhra Pradesh during 2016. Thanks to these camps, 61 cleft-children were convinced to undergo the operation and treatment. As mentioned in the previous year by Prof. Manikandhan, it is becoming more and more difficult to find cleft-children via these camps because more camps are organised every year by several organisations and there are more and more Cleft-centres.
  Prof. H. Sailer and a film crew from the US visited us in the Cleft-centre in Chennai. The film crew recorded a documentary about the work and efforts of the CCI. They filmed Prof. Sailer during his work in the surgery, where he discussed serious cases, and during an operation on a patient with a cranio-facial anomaly. 
  Dr. D. Nagalakshmi extended her training by three months (30.09.2015).
Dr. P. Preetam Anupam started his training as a fellow on 01.10.2015.
Dr. Senthilmurugan is now working as a senior fellow until August 2016.
Dr. Sneha, an employee for many years will not return after her maternity leave. She is devoting herself to her family. 
Prof. Manikandhan prepared seven publications together with his fellows this year. They were published in various journals.  Prof. Dr. Manikandhan was commended by the governor (Dr. K. Rosaiah) of the state of Tamil Nadu for his humanitarian services and research in cleft operations with an award - Our warmest congratulations! 
Prof. Manikandhan and his consultant Dr. P. Anantanarayanan working under the leadership of Prof. Sailer had three articles published in the Int. J. Maxillofac Oral Surg. (in the issues September, October and November 2016).   
Dr. P. Anantanarayanan presented eight papers at symposiums, conferences and workshops during 2016.