Help change a child's life with a smile

A charity is hoping for help to fund its simple mission - to put a smile back on the faces of children with cleft lips and palates.

Many have difficulty eating and speaking properly and some are cruelly teased by other youngsters, said David Wong, general manager of Operation Smile.

Their suffering can be ended by a 45-minute operation to stitch together the gap in their lip.

But hundreds of thousands of children from poor families in rural mainland communities are deprived of the surgery, he said.

That is because the mainland's public health system does not pay for the operation.

'On the mainland, about one in every 600 children is born with a cleft lip, a cleft palate, or both,' Wong said.