Smile Train opens cleft care center in Pampanga

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Smile Train continues to extend the reach of comprehensive cleft care (CCC) in the country.

The cleft-focused organization recently opened its latest CCC center in this city.

“San Fernandino Hospital has been helping Smile Train deliver essential treatment and care to people with cleft in the northern provinces of the Philippines for over a decade,” Felix Grimares, Jr., Smile Train’s Program Director for the Philippines, said.

“Our achieving more than 80,000 supported cleft surgeries milestone would not have been possible without the valuable partnership of institutions such as San Fernandino Hospital, and the opening of this new CCC center signals our unified and renewed commitment toward reinforcing the growing comprehensive cleft care system in the country," he added.

Through the collective efforts of Smile Train and its partners, indigent communities in Pampanga have access to 100% free cleft surgeries including pre and post-operative care.

Services such as orthodontic and dental treatment and speech therapy following cleft surgery are just some of the essential treatments Pampangueños and their families from nearby provinces will access all year at no cost.

“The San Fernandino CCC center aims to support Smile Train’s overall mission of ensuring the long-term, successful rehabilitation of children affected with clefts, servicing the Northern Luzon region. This new center helps us save and change more lives the best way we know how–through smiles,” Grimares said.

In 2023, Smile Train celebrated the first anniversary of its Cebu CCC center and launched its Marikina CCC center in partnership with Marikina St. Vincent Hospital.

It also launched its very first Cleft Leadership

Center (CLC) with Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation Philippines, Inc. (NCFPI) in Manila, leading the standard of multidisciplinary cleft care in the country.

Smile Train operates seven CCC centers through partner hospitals across the country–San Fernandino Hospital in Pampanga, the Philippine Band of Mercy, Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation of the Philippines, Craniofacial Foundation of the Philippines, Marikina St. Vincent General Hospital, Mabuhay Deseret Foundation in ARC Hospital in Cebu, Tebow CURE Hospital in Davao.