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.
Ayubu's classmates harassed him relentlessly for years because of a local myth about clefts. When he was 10 years old, his mother heard there was hope at a hospital less than an hour away.
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.