The Smile Star Mozambique 2024 team have received an incredibly heart warming and detailed testimonial from a local citizen of Vilanculous. In this blog, we share this entire testimonial from him.

“My name is Declerque Horácio Vilanculo, a citizen of Vilankulo city, in Mozambique and I am hereby to tell all of about my testimony of my experience with SmileStar on the first Visit to Mozambique (Vilankulo District specifically).

The trip was from 11th February 2024 to 22nd, with the main intent of treating any and everyone who would be suffering from toothache.

On the following day (12” February) we went to see the elderly care centre and an orphanage where the elder people and children were really suffering, and in about 1h30, the team saw 30 people (children and elders), doing more than 10 teeth painless extraction.

I started believing and being impressed from that moment.

The following days were like counting histories, we went to hte island (Quewene, 1h by fast boat, 2h dirty road), 14″ we went to Macunhe, 20km from the main city, 15th to Quequer A (70km far), 16th Machanissa (120km far), 19th Murrure (70km far), 20* Mapinhane (50km far), 21st Pambarra (20km far) and 22d in Vilankulo main hospital (right on the city).

During all these days, the job have been being performed with excellence and happiness from the professional team. Also one notable thing was how happy the local people were because of receiving the team and mainly after being attended (after extraction or advises), reporting always a very good feedback and zero pain.

Priceless happiness and smile we could see and receive from the local communities we visited and after 9 working days, under heavy sun, SmileStar managed ot attend to almost 900 people and more than 2.500 teeth extracted. The community visited did not have this kind of action and whenever they were in need they would have to travel to Vilankulo main hospital, under a risk of not being looked after because of the capacity and availability of material and equipment there.

SmileStar, left a big legacy, in addition to delivering the service to the population. They left a big legacy to our 3 Local Dentists (Helia, Kaira and Ofelia) who learnt a lot of new ways of doing this job with easy ways and more passion. And I would like to commend the excellent job done by the SmileStar Doctors, they managed in short time, to teach easy ways to the local Dentists and change their ways of doing the work.

On the 4 last days, the local Doctors were leading their own stations with no supervision and delivering a high quality job as part of SmileStar charity.

These Dentists need a lot of help, in continuous coaching, exposure to different working environment (being taken outside Mozambique), instruments, anaesthesia, dental equipment, (to expand stomatology services in distant regions) instruments, consumables, medicines and any other support that might be judge useful for the perfection of the work to be delivered.

Now, personally I wish to have SmileStar back in Mozambique as the people is really in a BIG NEED.

A big THANK is for the entire team for making this charity possible and putting smiles on our population’s faces by removing the pain that they have been facing.” – Declerque Horácio