Cleft palate at Komfo Anoyke Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana

cleft palate dentistsAfter a brief, but thorough cleft palate lesson last night, we dove in head first and spent the morning at the weekly cleft palate clinic at Komfo Anokye hospital in Kumasi run by Dr. Peter Donkor.  Patients travel from all over Ghana to come and see Dr. Donkor for cleft palate repair. Cleft palates are caused by a malformation of the palate during embryological development and, depending on the extent of the cleft, they can impact infant feeding as well as later speech development. Even after cleft palate repair, it is difficult without training to relearn how to say certain sounds, which are impossible to make when there is a cleft in the palate. As speech pathologists, our job is to work with mothers to guide and train them in proper feeding techniques for infants born with cleft palates. We also work with children and even adults who have had cleft palate repair to train them on proper production of many speech sounds.

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Guatemala 2012: “Building Capacity: The Cleft Palate Speech Training Project”

Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri of Teachers College Columbia University developed the “Building Capacity: The Cleft Palate Speech Training Project” for local professionals to begin to acquire the academic and clinical skills needed to provide quality services to children with cleft lip and palate. This project offers five days of intensive training with academic lectures in the mornings and clinical application with patients with cleft lip and palate in the afternoons. Read More

Las estrategias para producir la “S”

This tutorial is for families to improve a child’s speech after surgical repair of a cleft palate, when a specialist is not available. One tutorial is to improve feeding of babies before surgery to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate. These tutorials were created by Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri, Program in Speech-Language Pathology, Teachers College Columbia University. Read More

Las estrategias para quitar sonidos en la garganta (oclusión glótica) y para producir la “P”

This tutorial is for families to improve a child’s speech after surgical repair of a cleft palate, when a specialist is not available,. One tutorial is to improve feeding of babies before surgery to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate.These tutorials were created by Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri, Program in Speech-Language Pathology, Teachers College Columbia University. Read More

Las estrategias para producir la “K”

This tutorial is for families to improve a child’s speech after surgical repair a cleft palate, when a specialist is not available. One tutorial is to improve feeding of babies before surgery to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate.These tutorials were created by Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri, Program in Speech-Language Pathology, Teachers College Columbia University. Read More

Introduction to the video tutorials to improve speech of children with cleft palate

This tutorial is for families to improve a child’s speech after surgical repair a cleft palate, when a specialist is not available. One tutorial is to improve feeding of babies before surgery to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate. These tutorials were created by Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri, Program in Speech-Language Pathology, Teachers College Columbia University. Read More

Las estrategias para producir la “D”

This tutorial is for families to improve a child’s speech after surgical repair of a cleft palate, when a specialist is not available. One tutorial is to improve feeding of babies before surgery to repair a cleft lip or cleft palate. These tutorials were created by Catherine Crowley and Miriam Baigorri, Program in Speech-Language Pathology, Teachers College Columbia University. Read More