The Dentistry For Every Village Foundation recently signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Divine Mercy Integrated Academy Health Center to build a full-service dental office to serve the poverty-stricken residents of Barangay Soledad, Municipality of Villareal, Western Samar, Philippines. The signing was done May 30, 2022.
Signing for the Health Center were Bishop Isabelo C. Abarquez (President) and Sister Mary Jane Buhagin, FSDM. (Assistant Administrator). Dr. Amry Jane Chavez-Noza of Las PIñas City, the Special Assistant to the D4EVF President Dr. Ed de la Vega of Woodland Hills, CA signed for the Foundation.
The signing ceremony was held at the campus of the Divine Mercy Integrated Academy, an institution run and operated by the Franciscan Order, a Catholic religious group based in the Island of Samar.
The dental clinic will present a huge opportunity for the Franciscan Order to enhance their humanitarian health care ministry. It will be a dental care boost for the mostly financially challenged students at the school and the poor and underserved in the Municipality of Villareal and nearby municipalities.
The Municipality of Villareal is classified as “4th class” due to poverty and the lack of municipal services for the people. The town does not have a municipal water supply and people mostly rely on deep wells and bottled water. A dedicated deep water well will be dug purposely to provide water for the health center. A filter system provided by the D4EVF will be installed to assure that the water at the Health Center is clean and potable.
The administration recently signed a contract with a dentist from the nearby island of Leyte to man the proposed dental clinic initially on a three days a week basis.
The D4EVF will provide all the dental equipment, hand instruments and start-up supplies sourced from various dental equipment dealers at Manila. Many instruments will also be procured in the US and shipped to the Philippines and or hand carried by the D4EVF Staff when they attend the blessing and the opening of the dental clinic. The D4EVF will also periodically send dental supplies for the clinic.
Barring construction delays due to the difficulty of procuring construction materials in Villareal, the project is set to break ground in the middle of June. and is scheduled to be completed before the year ends.
Construction of the facility will include a dedicated rooms for consultation and or treatment by the school nurse as well as the physician that occasionally visits.
The Dentistry for Every Village Foundation, Inc., raises funds by seeking grants and donations to build dental clinics. These clinics are donated to health care institutions that have the resources to house the facility, experiences and expertise to run them efficiently, and whose management is supportive of the cause.
