Sesnie Zemichael Is Giving African Children New Smiles Through Cleft Care

44-year-old Sesnie Zemichael was not meant to beryllium successful Nairobi, astatine slightest not successful the mode that she arrived.

Conflict successful her homeland brought her to Kenya successful 2020. When civilian warfare broke retired successful Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Sesnie, who is of Tigrayan descent, was forced to fly the federation for safety. The turmoil disrupted her vocation successful nationalist health.

“It was a precise unpleasant, abrupt exit,” she says. “I had to permission my position, my home, and a web I had spent years building.”

But she turned her concern astir and rebuilt her beingness — successful Nairobi.

The metropolis gave her a caller start. She adapted and evolved her career. Eventually, she co-founded a healthcare installation that contiguous provides free, life-changing therapy to immoderate of East and Central Africa’s astir underserved people: those with cleft lip.

Every year, astir 32,000 babies successful Africa are calved with cleft articulator and/or palate, but little than fractional person the indispensable country and follow-up care.

According to a 2025 systematic review, mortality rates for infants calved with cleft articulator and palate successful low-income countries tin scope 19.8%, with a median of 10.2%. Newborns are astir vulnerable, peculiarly erstwhile attraction is delayed oregon different problems exist. In Sub-Saharan Africa, children with clefts are doubly arsenic apt to beryllium malnourished, a superior origin driving premature deaths.

Sesnie, raised successful Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has an world inheritance successful selling and concern administration. However, her vocation way swiftly switched to humanitarian and improvement work. She has antecedently worked with starring planetary organisations, including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) (formerly DFID), the World Bank, Save the Children, and Irish Aid, arsenic good arsenic successful the backstage assemblage and societal enterprise.

One specified venture, dedicated to empowering radical with disabilities successful Ethiopia, is what ignited her enduring committedness to community-centred care.

She was introduced to cleft articulator attraction successful 2015, erstwhile she accepted a relation astatine Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused nonprofit, delivering escaped country and broad attraction to children crossed much than 70 countries.

“I had nary thought what a cleft was. I had ne'er seen one,” she admits.

From 2015 to 2020, Sesnie was Smile Train’s elder determination programme manager, starring cleft projects successful 8 countries, from Somalia and Ethiopia to Malawi and South Sudan.

Dr. Martin Kamau, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with extended acquisition successful cleft country and aesculapian training, and Paul Kimani, a healthcare operations specialist, co-founded the Bela Risu Foundation. The conception was developed successful 2013 and officially launched successful 201...