Miss Universe Ghana collaborates with Smile Train Africa

Miss Universe Ghana has teamed up with Smile Train Africa to create awareness and advocate for children suffering with cleft lip and palate in Ghana.

Through this collaboration, Menaye Donkor, CEO and National Director for Miss Universe Ghana, will be the Goodwill Ambassador for Smile Train in Ghana and will help raise awareness of the issues faced by children living with untreated clefts.

As a part of her commitment, Menaye will be visiting some of Smile Train’s local partner hospitals in Accra during their cleft week to see the local surgeons perform life-changing cleft surgeries firsthand and interact with some of the patients. This will be in addition to her participation at the Cleft Palate Speech Camp.

Smile Train’s sustainable model provides training, funding and resources to empower local doctors in 85+ developing countries to provide 100%-free cleft repair surgery and comprehensive cleft care in their own communities. It is estimated that 748 children in Ghana are born with clefts every year.

Smile Train Ghana has more than 6 local partner hospitals and 12 partner surgeons who are on the ground helping children with clefts 365 days a year. To date Smile Train has provided cleft repair surgery to more than 2,000 patients in Ghana.

Smile Train provides financial support to help cover the costs for surgery and has also provided support for crucial safety equipment like pulse oximeters and surgical instruments and supplies like scalpels and sutures.

All of these investments make not only a significant number of incremental surgeries possible, but also makes these surgeries safer and of higher quality.

For more information about Smile Train's global efforts, please visit smiletrain.org. Follow Smile Train Africa on Twitter @SmileTrainAfric Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/SmileTrainAfrica