By starting the CCI Cleft-Children International in Zurich, Prof. Dr. med., Dr. med. dent., Dr. med. h. c. mult., Dr. sc. h. c. Hermann F. Sailer has established yet another milestone in the fight against the sad fate of millions of severely disfigured children.

Millions of children in India are forced to go through their life disfigured, disabled and marginalised, because a cleft palate or lip has made them outcasts. Children with the cleft palate or lip can neither eat nor drink, talk or smile, and so have no chance of a positive future!

Prof. Sailer is fighting to save these children from such a fate. In the year 2000, he started his initiative from Zurich, to enable children from India suffering from a cleft lip or palate to get the same kind of treatment as children from western industrialised countries. In the years 2005 and 2006, the Cleft-Kinder-Hilfe-Professor Hermann Sailer Stiftung was set up as a result in Germany and the Cleft Bambini Italia Onlus, Fondazione Prof. Hermann Sailer Onlus, in Italy. His vision as an expert in facial surgery is to turn a disfigured or malformed face into a normal but particularly attractive face, and in this way gift a normal life and happy future to affected children.

So far, Prof. Sailer has set up five multidisciplinary treatment centres in India: in Mangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai (Madras), Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkatta. Cleft treatment centres have been established in Rumania and Cameroon as well. Here, helping people to help themselves has become reality. Numerous surgeons, anaesthetists, speech therapists, ear specialists, dentists, orthodontists and nurses were trained on site by Prof. Sailer's foundation. Prof. Sailer and renowned experts from all over the world keep conducting g honorary courses in operations at the cleft centres.

Thanks to Prof. Sailer, it has been possible to operate on and finance more than 25,000 children with cleft lip or palate till today. These have been recorded and documented in the database at the CCI in Zurich.