Thanks to Dr. Cuadros — and Smile Train — having a cleft on the Navajo reservations of New Mexico is no longer a sentence to a life of isolation and sickness.
Everyone told Gyana to abandon her daughter when she was born with a cleft; her husband threatened to kill himself if she didn't. Afraid for both their lives, she took the child and fled.
When Dr. Dau started as a Smile Train partner, he knew children with clefts were often abandoned or put in orphanages. As an orphan himself, he comes to work each day determined that no other child should experience that pain.