UAE/PHILIPPINES. Dubai Duty Free has released a video (see below) celebrating its life-changing work with cleft charity The Smile Train in the Philippines.
Dubai Duty Free first started working with The Smile Train in 2009. Since then it has not only directly funded 5,000 cleft operations but also financially underwritten vital hospital infrastructure in Luzan, Mindanao and Visayas, making over 13,000 surgeries possible.
Additionally, through Dubai Duty Free’s support, The Smile Train has trained over 100 medical professionals, ensuring that best practice in cleft treatment is bequeathed to the country long into the future. That training has embraced surgeons, nurses, anaesthetists, paediatricians, speech pathologists, orthodontists and dentists.
Through its work, Dubai Duty Free has not only aided thousands of children and teenagers with clefts but also ensured almost immeasurable improvements to healthcare in the Philippines.
The donation carries extra resonance for Dubai Duty Free. Currently it employs 2,453 Filipinos.
The Smile Train said: “Thank you Dubai Duty Free for changing the world – one smile at a time.”
ABOUT THE SMILE TRAIN
The Smile Train is dedicated to treating a single solvable problem – cleft lips and/or palates. Millions of children in developing countries are suffering from untreated clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly and aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job.
The charity aims to “give every child the chance to smile”.
The Smile Train provides 100%-free cleft repair surgery and comprehensive cleft care to children in more than 85 developing countries. Its sustainable model empowers local doctors to provide cleft care in their own communities.
The Smile Train refers to that model as “teach a man to fish”, which focuses on training local doctors to perform cleft repair surgery and provide comprehensive cleft care in their own communities. Those doctors then go on to train other doctors, creating a long-term, sustainable system.
For more details or to donate to The Smile Train please contact www.smiletrain.org
