Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh girl with cleft disorder is now a speech therapist

HYDERABAD: D Padmavathi’s story is of true grit and gumption. The tribal girl from the small village of Nandavaram in Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool district is a speech therapist in Hyderabad now, having beaten the odds in overcoming her rare cleft disorder.
Not just that, she also took care of a 10-month-old orphan found abandoned in a Bengaluru dust bin, who was also born with a cleft defect.
Padmavathi was born with a facial cleft defect.
She suffered from a severe variant of cleft palate called ‘Tessier craniofacial cleft’ where not only lips and teeth but the nose was also cut into half.
After the death of her mother when she was a child, her father abandoned her. Padmavathi’s grandparents and her uncle took care of her and brought her to GSR Institute of Facial Plastic Surgery in Hyderabad. Dr Gosla Srinivas Reddy, director of the institute, promised to help her and operated on her disorder for free.
Padmavathi told TOI, “After the surgery, I was in an orphanage in Hyderabad and went to a cleft school in Santhosh Nagar.” A Swiss organisation run by professor Hermann F Sailer and Dr Erika Sailer helped fund her studies. Thanks to their help, she went to one of the top boarding schools — Ross School — in New York and studied there for four years.
Padmavathi visited Costa Rica and Italy as part of her curricular activities. In February this year, she joined Sweekaar Academy of Rehabilitation Sciences, Secunderabad, where she is pursuing her bachelor of audiology, speech, language, and pathology course.
Applauding her, Dr Srinivas Reddy said: “I have seen two rare cases of Padmavathi and now that of orphan baby Sameeksha. When she was 15, Padmavathi underwent a second surgery for her nose correction. The smile on her face is back.”
He further said, “Parents abandoned the small girl in Bengaluru. She had a similar problem of facial cleft—like Padmavathi—and her fate bought her to GSR Institute when she was just nine months old. We have done the surgery at Hyderabad Cleft Society. Sameeksha has recovered well and went back to Bengaluru. Padmavathi took care of Sameeksha during her stay in Hyderabad.” Dr Reddy has done 30,000 cleft palate surgeries.