By: Brian Mullaney
Co-Founder / President The Smile Train
Our team just returned from a very eye-opening, exhausting, depressing, inspiring trip to the Philippines and I thought you might enjoy hearing how we are using your donations to make a difference.
The Philippines is an amazing yet complex country. Parts of it breathtakingly lush and beautiful— other parts are unbelievably wretched and poverty stricken. You can guess where we spent all of our time.
Of the 85 million people who live in the Philippines, about half of them are living on less than $2 a day. That explains why almost 90% of the 5,000 new babies born with clefts every year here never receive the reconstructive surgery they need.
The cleft problem is a major problem and it gets bigger and bigger every year. Ironically, the Philippines are a hotbed for American mission groups — many of whom have been coming here for many years. The only problem is these well-intentioned mission groups have actually made the cleft problem worse.
Filipino doctors refuse to do clefts because so many American doctors come every year to fix them. And Filipino mothers say they want an American surgeon for their child — not a Filipino. We are working hard to turn this situation around. By empowering and supporting Filipino surgeons and nurses, Smile Train is helping the Philippines become self-sufficient one smile at a time.
Over the past few years we have partnered with 38 hospitals in the Philippines, and this year we will provide over 4,000 surgeries here. Every surgery we do will be done by a proud, caring Filipino surgeon and this year for the first time ever, more cleft surgeries will be done by Filipinos than visiting mission groups!
It is hard to describe just how poor most of our patients are here. We met little Vemer Rufino who is a 7-month-old child living in the notorious Payatas slum in Quezon City, Manila. This place is right out of a Hollywood horror movie. Imagine a slum that is built on more than 50 acres of garbage towering hundreds of feet into the air. And the noise and rumble of almost 500 garbage trucks, bringing 1,300 tons of new garbage every day.
The stench is simply impossible to describe. Among the billions of flies, rats, snakes, cockroaches and other slimy creatures that thrive on this dump live 30,000 helpless peasants who have no way out and depend on this garbage dump for their daily bread and their very existence.
Vemer’s family lives in a little shack right next to the dump site. His father and mother are scavengers who are up before dawn to collect plastics and other similar receptacles in the garbage site. They sell these and use the proceeds to feed their family. On a really good day, they could make about three to four US dollars. But that’s a good day, many days they make less than a dollar, some days they make nothing at all. That means sometimes this family of six eats — and sometimes they don’t.
Vemer is the youngest child and severely malnourished. He has undergone preliminary screening at a Smile Train partner hospital and will undergo surgery for his cleft once he becomes strong enough.
We also visited Glenda Brando who waited 11 years for her cleft lip and palate surgery. She lives with her sisters and her father in a squatter’s compound in metro Manila. The slum where Glenda lives in is a flood zone.
For three months now, the water has not subsided. The water level INSIDE the house is about three feet. The dirty, smelly water, which floods the house, in which the children play and bathe every day, is extremely polluted. Nobody has toilets, a water supply or electricity.
When they can afford it, Glenda’s dad buys water for the family to take a bath at the price of one peso per gallon (about two cents in U.S. dollars). For the privilege of living in this slum, Glenda’s dad has to pay rent of 700 pesos a month. (About $15 a month.)
Glenda’s dad, Salvador, is illiterate. He goes from one, low-paying construction job to another. He underwent colon surgery a few years ago which makes it more difficult. When he does work, he earns about $3 a day. To make matters worse, Glenda’s mom died five years ago. This leaves Salvador as a single dad trying to raise four girls. The oldest girl no longer lives at home, which leaves Glenda in charge of the household and responsible for the welfare of her two little sisters.
Being a mom at the age of 11 in a slum, waist deep in sewage water is tough enough. Imagine doing it with a horrific cleft lip and palate that makes intelligible speech impossible, with no education.
In America, most 11-year-old girls are watching High School Musical, begging their parents for their first cell phone or buying American Girl Doll Starter Kits ($178 a pop, includes 3 outfits and the baby llama).
Glenda is struggling to keep her sisters alive. Struggling to communicate. Worried about paying the rent. Worried about being able to buy water to bathe this month. Wondering if her dad will find work, come home and stay away from alcohol. (I didn’t mention his drinking problem earlier as I was worried you’d stop reading.)
But believe it or not, amidst all of this, something good did actually happen to poor Glenda. A concerned neighbor contacted an organization called “Bantay-Bata 163”, which helps families in crisis. And they told Glenda about a free cleft surgery program that would change her life.
Glenda underwent surgery on her cleft lip and palate at De Ocampo Memorial Medical Center, by Smile Train surgeon Dr. Melanio Cruz. It took just a couple of hours.
Amazing isn’t it? Just a couple of hours to save a young girl from a lifetime of heartache and pain, shame and suffering. Even with her new smile, life will not be easy for Glenda Brando. But now at least, she has a chance.
A second chance at life that you helped make possible.
On behalf of Glenda, and all the other children like her, who have received free cleft surgery through Smile Train, I thank you. If you have sent us a donation recently, I hope this story makes you glad you did.
If you haven’t sent us a donation recently, please consider it. We need your help now more than ever. Our donations are down while the number of kids showing up at our hospitals asking for help keeps increasing.
Thank you! You often write very interesting articles. You improved my mood.