Renowned as the doctor who was responsible for the smile of over 15,000 patients, 89-year-old Dr. Hirji S. Adenwalla passed away on 27th May, 2020. He was the Director at the Charles Pinto Cleft Centre at Jubilee Mission Hospital in Thissur, Kerala. Making children smile was his lifetime mission, he dedicated five decades to performing surgeries to correct the cleft lip and palate – a congenital deformity in children. He had performed over 17,000 cleft lip and palate surgeries on children. Due to turn 90 on 5th June, Dr. Adenwalla was being treated for fever and breathing difficulty at a private hospital in Coimbatore.

Hailing originally from Mumbai, Dr. Adenwalla joined Jubilee Mission in 1959 and teamed up with the US-based Smile Train, a non-profit organisation dedicated to cleft lip and palate surgery worldwide. Dr. Adenwalla served as Chief Medical Superintendent for 25 years. The partnership with Smile Train helped in performing the surgery free of cost on children from poor families. 

After achieving his degree in Medicine, Dr. Adenwalla wanted to dedicate his life to doing missionary work. Post his marriage, he wished to move with his family to Africa, but respected his parents’ wishes to the contrary. He then joined this Hospital in Thissur in 1958. He later got his FRCS degree. Since 2013, he worked for two weeks a month and returned to his daughter’s house in Kovai. The last cleft surgery he performed was in December 2019. Dr. Adenwalla was awarded with the Joseph G. McCarthy Award for Cleft Surgery, often regarded as the ‘Nobel’’ of in cleft surgery.

Despite the lockdown, Director of the hospital, Fr. Francis Pallikunnath, came to Coimbatore to pay his last respects to Dr. Adenwalla. He shared that Dr. Adenwalla worked with a missionary zeal and treating children with cleft lip and palate became his passion. He said that even at the age of 89, he was still practicing until he moved in with his daughter in Coimbatore. The centre currently does around 60 free surgeries a month to correct cleft lip and palate.