The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund would like to express its deepest condolences on the passing of Dr. Rafael Ruiz Rodriguez “Rafa”. Dr. Khaled Abughazaleh, a longtime friend and colleague of Dr. Rafa, attended his funeral in Mexico both in an individual and personal capacity and on behalf of Rafa’s PCRF family. Rafa was a true humanitarian who dedicated his life to the service of children with cleft lip and palate all over the world. He was a professor of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico city and a pioneer in cleft lip and palate surgery who traveled the world; both treating thousands of children and educating hundreds of doctors. Rafa had a special love for Palestine, ever since his first mission to Nablus in 2005 he committed to keep on returning. Other than his native Mexico, Palestine was the only other country in the world in which he continued to do two missions every year as he went on to lead over 30 missions to Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan and to head the PCRF Oral Maxillofacial medical advisory committee. He was also a true pioneer of the Palestinian cause and committed to keep on returning to help the children in Palestine in particular because as he said it the children and people of Palestine do not only suffer for medical need but also from occupation and for this unique reason he committed to Palestine. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. He will be missed and his legacy of compassion, humanitarianism and medical excellence will be forever cherished by the many lives he touched and changed and will live on in all those he educated both as surgeons and as fellow humanitarians.