Tears from mother after a cleft palate charity gives her son his ‘beautiful smile’

Bernadette Guarino saw her two-year-old son smile for the first time and was moved to tears by its beauty.

Her son Zack was born with a cleft lip and palate, caused by lack of proper joining in facial tissues during development.

“I found out when I was six months pregnant that my son had a cleft lip and palate,” Ms Guarino said.

The mother, originally from the Philippines, said her initial reaction was fear. Zack is her youngest child and he has three sisters.

“I was immediately worried about his future,” Ms Guarino said. “I was worried about bullying and the difficult life ahead of him.

“In the Philippines, I had seen many kids who were constantly bullied and made fun of because of their cleft lip. I didn’t want that for my son,” she said.

In such cases the lip is split in two, leaving a hole that extends to the nose, while a cleft palate is a split or opening in the roof of the mouth. Children can have both.

Every three minutes, a child is born with a cleft lip or cleft palate.

Ms Guarino is unemployed, and her husband earns less than Dh5,000 a month. They were told that corrective surgery for Zack could cost as much as Dh40,000.

“There was no way we could afford the operation,” said her husband, Ruel Guarino.

Ms Guarino contacted Operation Smile, a non-profit organisation that provides free cleft lip and palate repair surgeries to children worldwide.

Last week, Zack and 12 other children had their operations completed thanks to about 200 volunteers from Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

“My son had his surgery on Friday. It was the first time that we saw him smile and it was the most beautiful thing in the world,” Ms Guarino said with tears in her eyes.

But the journey is not over yet. Zack will require further operations to his palate, which Operation Smile in co-operation with Cleveland hope to complete soon.

Zack was one of 12 children who had surgery thanks to 200 volunteers from Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi