Sixteen precious children are getting a brand new reason to smile this week, as the Smile Foundation hosts its first-ever Smile Week at KZN’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital.
Durban, South Africa (24 October 2025) – This week, 16 little lives got the precious gift of a smile through life-changing cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries!
Smile Foundation hosted its first-ever Smile Week at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, which took place from 20 to 24 October 2025. This landmark initiative provided 16 surgeries to children like nine-month-old Lwenkosi, born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate.
The Smile Week included a range of primary and secondary procedures, such as cleft lip and palate repairs, velopharyngeal insufficiency correction, fistula repair, revisional surgery and bone grafting. These surgeries not only restored smiles but also significantly improved speech, feeding, and long-term quality of life for the young patients.
A key focus of this Smile Week was skills transfer and professional development, as the initiative strengthens specialist medical training within the public healthcare system.
Led by Prof Mahendra Daya and Dr Khumalo, the programme features internal presentations and hands-on training aimed at registrars and anaesthetists. This consolidated exposure offers a much broader surgical experience than is typically available, helping to build future capacity in reconstructive surgery.
Tshidi Chabane-Xaba, COO of Smile Foundation, emphasised that collaboration is essential in a time where the Department of Health budget constraints often limit surgical slates.
“This Smile Week allows us to overcome resource challenges, deliver more surgeries and, importantly, equip emerging surgeons and anaesthetists with hands-on experience in complex reconstructive procedures. We extend our heartfelt thanks to our long-standing partner Adcock Ingram for their unwavering support, to Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital for their collaboration, and to the exceptional medical team whose dedication makes this life-changing work possible. Together, we are not only restoring smiles, but we are also strengthening the future of specialist healthcare in South Africa.”
Adcock Ingram, the supporting partner for this Smile Week, emphasised the importance of combining service delivery with training.
“By enabling both patient care and skills development, this programme creates long-term impact. Together with Smile Foundation, we are helping to shape a stronger, more sustainable public healthcare system,” says Nkosinathi Mthethwa, Group Executive Public Affairs at Adcock Ingram.
This Smile Week showcased the power of partnership, bringing together dedicated medical teams, corporate support and non-profit innovation to deliver lasting change.
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