Appreciates help

Editor,

For volunteers and the community.

I would like to thank you for volunteering this weekend at our first free dental day event here in Porterville.

The patients really appreciated everything you did. I’m sure you noticed that the patients were really appreciative. I appreciate all of you working together and coming together from all over the state to volunteer here locally in our small town, Porterville. We treated 17 patients on Saturday. Many of you had the chance to meet Mayor Gurrola and Mr. Terry Philips, who ran for Congress this year. It was great to have a large crowd from the community hear them both speak about access to dental services.

We had to turn away close to a dozen patients who either could wait no longer or had to be turned away due to capacity issues. We hope to hold this event again in the new year due to popular demand. Next time, we may hold an extraction and emergency dental care clinic to help relieve the ER at the hospital and urgent care clinics in our community.

If you get a chance, like our Facebook page so you can keep up to date as new events come up: http://www.facebook.com/sweetsmilesdental

Neilesh Patel, DDS
Porterville