A hole in the palate: the little girl of the desert operated on at Gemelli

She was operated on the Gemelli Yamila, the ‘little girl of the desert’, a little girl of just over a year who lives in a refugee camp in the Saharawi, one of the poorest regions in the world, and was born with a malformation of the palate, the cleft palate. Children with this malformation literally have a hole in the palate, which connects the mouth with the nasal cavities, creating problems with swallowing, breathing, speech and exposes them to the risk of inhaling milk and food, with the danger of develop ‘ab ingestis’ pneumonia. The solution for this malformation is only surgical and must be entrusted to expert hands.

Emergency smiles

But little Yamila, who is now just over a year old, lives in Saharawi, a small state of just over a million inhabitants, in the Western Sahara region, south of Morocco and Algeria, seemed light years away from This possibility. And therefore a malformation can become a sentence. But fortunately there are angels, such as those of Emergenza Sorrisi, who take care of these creatures, reported to them and assisted by other associations operating in these border realities, such as ‘Rio de Oro’ OdV which organized the trip to Rome and ASAPS (Association of Solidarity and Friendship with the Saharawi People) which took care of the hospitality of the child and her father in Italy.

And the collaboration with the Gemini

The operation was carried out by the maxillofacial surgery team directed by Professor Alessandro Moro thanks to the collaboration between Emergenza Sorrisi and the Agostino Gemelli IRCCS University Polyclinic Foundation, in place since 2015. For several years, Gemelli has entered into an agreement with Emergenza Sorrisi to allow these children to return to live a normal life, thanks to an intervention that corrects their malformation. Little Yamila, thanks to this humanitarian bridge, therefore arrived at the Gemelli Polyclinic accompanied by her father, last Thursday she was entrusted to the care of the UOC of Pediatrics, directed by Professor Giuseppe Zampino, associate of general and specialist paediatrics at the Catholic University, and on Friday she underwent correction of her cleft palate by the team of the Gemelli Maxillofacial Surgery UOC. The surgery was performed by Dr. Fabio Massimo Abenavoli and by Dr. Enrico Foresta. The patient, immediately after the operation, was entrusted to the care of the pediatric doctors and it is also thanks to this synergy that little Yamila was treated and discharged in a short time.

Untreatable patients in their countries

“I would like to thank the Gemelli IRCCS Polyclinic Foundation with which we have been collaborating since 2015 – underlines Dr. Fabio Massimo Abenavoli, Plastic and Maxillofacial Surgeon, President and Founder of Emergenza Sorrisi – and which gives us the opportunity to help patients in serious difficulty, which cannot be treated in their own countries. I also thank the consular authorities who granted the visas and authorizations to reach Rome and the doctors and nurses who participated in this wonderful adventure “.

The importance of humanitarian projects

“We are very keen to keep this collaboration with ‘Emergenza Sorrisi’ alive – says Professor Alessandro Moro, director of Maxillofacial Surgery, Agostino Gemelli University Hospital Foundation IRCCS, associate of Maxillofacial Surgery at the Catholic University – which has already started several years ago and which we have resumed, after the setback due to Covid. We are very happy to return to give our contribution to this humanitarian project “. The operation to which the small arrived from the Saharawi was subjected lasted just over an hour. Just one turn of the minute hand on the clock face; enough, however, to restore a better life and future to this creature.