LAHORE (PR): A delegation from Taiwan has reached Lahore to distribute food aid among the needy and destitute people in Pakistan. The Executive Director of Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation (NCF) Rebecca Wang was leading the delegation, while the other members included Lee Shang Lin, Huang Pei Li and Liang Yung Kuang.
This was stated by Prof Dr Ghulam Qadir Fayyaz, General Secretary ,Cleft Lip and Palate Association of Pakistan (CLAPP), here at Lahore Press Club on Monday. President Al Mustafa Welfare Society (Trust) Mian Khalid Habib Elahi was also present on the occasion.
Prof Fayyaz said that delegation has reached with an aid of 500 ton rice from Taiwan and it would be distributed during the next three months with the help of Al Mustafa Welfare Society (Trust), which already has a countrywide network. A ceremony for the distribution of rice would be held at Shahdara, Lahore on Thursday, June 12 and later it would also distribute in other parts of the country include 15 districts of the Punjab province, 25 districts in Sindh province and then in Muzaffarabad Azad Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

 The rice aid had already reached in Karachi and Al Mustafa Welfare Society was making 10 Kg bags for each family under the supervision of Haji Muhammad Hanif Tayyab. This was the fourth time when Taiwan was sending the rice aid in Pakistan. In 2011 we received 100 ton rice for the flood victim, in 2012 400 tons rice and last year 500 ton rice from the brother country. The market prices of the rice aid was estimated Rs 30 million, while Al Mustafa Welfare Society had spent Rs 5 million for packing, transportation and distribution purposes.
Prof Fayyaz said that during current year CLAPP would conduct 300 surgeries for the children who were suffering cleft lip and palate problems. CLAPP would organise free camps in backward and far-flung areas. Taiwan would also train the Pakistani doctors and medical staff for modern techniques of plastic surgery and speech therapy.
The delegation’s members would also visit at CLAPP Hospital in Faisal Town and they would address the training sessions for the surgeons, orthodontists and speech therapists and later they would leave for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to meet a small baby girl Laiba, a cranio-Facial deformity with cleft lip & palate patient, who was operated in Taiwan. The Executive Director of Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation (NCF) Rebecca Wang told the media that cleft lip and palate patients could not smile and eat properly and even they could not attend the school classes and they were forced to live without marriage. She said Pakistan has become the fourth largest country in the world where about 10000 children were born every year with cleft lip and palate problems. Due to lack of medical facilities and plastic surgeons in public sector, the number of such patients has reached more 300,000 in Pakistan.’’ CLAPP is the largest organisation in country which sets up free medical camps and operates the cleft lip and palate patients free of cost. Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation (NCF) will also organise free medical camps with the collaboration of CLAPP in remote areas and conduct free surgeries for the poor and needy patients’’ Rebecca Wang added.