By Godfred A. Polkuu, GNA
Bolgatanga, Oct. 15, GNA – Dr Paa Ekow Hoyte-Williams, a Craniofacial Plastic Reconstructive Surgeon, has successfully performed a macrostomia operation, to repair the mouth muscles of a two-year old girl, Marifazah Abacha, in the Upper East Regional Hospital.
Dr Hoyte-Williams, who is also the Director of Medical Affairs for Restoring Emotional Stability Through Outstanding Reconstructive Efforts (RESTORE), a worldwide Foundation, said the muscles of the child’s mouth were extended beyond normal; and said “in scientific terms it belongs to a classification called Tessier Cleft number 7.”
Dr Hoyte-Williams said “the child has incontinence of the mouth; she is not able to hold saliva and other fluids because the muscles are very weak and when she drinks water or feeds it drops from the corners of the lips”.
“So we repaired the defect, repaired the muscles and restored the skin. The child will have full continence and look very nice and beautiful, and walk without any social embarrassment,” he said.
Dr Hoyte-Williams, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at the main theatre of the hospital after he had finished the procedure, said it was a congenital defect that could have been caused by several factors.
He said such cases might occur in isolation, “May be some lack of folic acid, or lack of preconception care, viral infections during pregnancy, some maternal conditions like diabetic mellitus, it is multi-factorial and it will be very difficult in this particular girl to say what exactly caused it.”
The Kumasi-based Surgeon led a twenty-member team of volunteer doctors with diverse expertise- Anesthesiologists, Surgical and Peri-Operative Nurses drawn from Ghana, Germany, Canada, USA and Mali, to perform free Plastic Reconstructive surgeries for the people in the Region.
He said RESTORE is an international organization which brings together international experts who have the passion to restore emotional stability and functional self-worth back to individuals who hitherto have lost them through events such as trauma, or from birth. “An example is just the case of Marifazah Abacha.”
Dr Hoyte-Williams said the surgery which was done for free would have amounted to over GHC 3000.00 in total costs.
Asked how challenging it was to perform the procedure in the facility, the Surgeon said “there is no Plastic Surgeon in the Upper East Region, and so they don’t have plastic surgical equipment, we are compromising in terms of struggling with the instruments we use. Fortunately we brought some instruments as well.”
Some patients who were in the queue to undergo various surgical procedures, expressed gratitude to the team for their humanitarian services, “They are doing a good job, I am overwhelmed,” Madam Helena Azowine, a mother of a child who had undergone a different surgical procedure, said.
Madam Precious Onyinye Udebuani, a patient who travelled from Nigeria to the Region for surgery, said she was involved in a car accident last year and sustained multiple facial fractures.
“The first hospital that managed me did the soft tissue repairs then the next surgery I did was to fix the fractures and after that, they couldn’t fix the nasal fractures. That was how I reached out to the RESTORE team,” she said.
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