DT News - Canada - Ma Rowena Balleza, DMD: Doing well by doing good

Dental Tribune Canada

Sun. 8 March 2015

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It was simple curiosity that prompted Ma Rowena Balleza, DMD, to accept an invitation from a surgeon to participate in a 2012 medical/dental mission to Tarlac City in the Philippines. But her annual trips since then have become more of a calling. “It was a life-changing experience,” Balleza said of the 2012 mission. “I saw the needs of the indigent people who travelled up to four hours from different villages to get to the hospital.”

During the 10 days of clinics, the Canadian Medical Mission Society (CMMS) team treated about 1,100 patients ranging in age from 2 to 84. “The medical teams were doing minor and major surgeries in the operating room, mainly head-and-neck cases,” Balleza said. “The dental team concentrated on the arrest and control of oral infections, mainly extractions and draining infected soft tissues.”

In February 2013, Balleza, who has practices in Surrey and Langley, British Columbia, returned to the Philippines with the same group on another two-week mission, this time to General Santos City in Mindanao, an island province in the southern Philippines. “Our group was the first medical/dental team to land in this (area), proud to have brought the Canadian flag to this region of the country,” Balleza said.

With rebel militants active in the province’s north, the team set up under the umbrella of a military security detail. Patients were in line at 5 a.m. every day, and the team put in 12-hour days.

The need was so great, the team returned in February 2014, bringing the total number of patients treated in the area to 2,400, with 1,700 receiving surgical and restorative dental treatments. “I truly believe in the vision of CMMS,” Balleza said. “I sensed the calling to share my blessings with people in need, and together ‘We can Bring Hope for Better Health’ (the CMMS mission statement).”

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