Healthcare Outreach
The goal of our healthcare outreach is to provide care, supplies, education and on-going disease prevention to under-served populations in the world. Part of this care includes health education. Local health care providers receive training in teaching preventive medicine to their patients.
Bolivia:
We continue to work in Bolivia each March. Our clinics are located within the Amanacer Orphanage system. Local dentists work in some of the clinics between visits from our dentists, so some care is provided throughout the year. A screening clinic is done the day before the actual dental clinic is run. During screening, identification of the patients with the most serious need is made and the work that needs to be done is documented. On clinic days there are many needs to be met in addition to the dental care. The children have to be identified and located, brought to the clinic, have their appointment purpose explained to them and afterwards, given some amount of after-care to assure that they do not injure themselves by biting novocaine numbed tissue.
Most of our patients are children, but at times care is given to people who are in desperate and urgent need. Such a group of women were presented to us this year. The women are a group who make their living from foraging any re-usable items they can find from the dump. None had ever seen a dentist before, and they had no money to ever be seen other than by our clinic. The visit was quite an ordeal for them, because in addition to the stress of going to their first ever dental appointment, they had to be talked into giving up their meager income for the day because of the appointment. We did our best to make this up to them with some clothing, food, dental supplies and personal hygiene items.
In the orphanages, toothbrushes are hard to come by, and are actually kept locked up by the staff until needed daily. Basic personal hygiene items such as combs are bingo prizes to be won. These children really do not have anything that they take for granted.
There is a large number (20,000) of homeless children in Cochabamba. Word was out that a dental group was in the hotel. One evening, two little street children came into the lobby, very insistent on talking to the "dentistas." It turned out that they wanted 2 toothbrushes. These two little children had passed by an armed guard at the entrance of the hotel into an environment very foreign to them, approached adults inside the lobby that they had never met before and asked us very politely not for a toy or money, but for a healthcare item.
Uganda:
Uganda is a stunning country with beautiful people. We go to Uganda every January, June and July; we work with the Muchiga People, Buhomans and the Batwa Pigmies in SW Uganda .
The story of a typical trip.
Since ur first year, Jonathan has been our guide. He was a remarkable man who wanted to give back to his community by helping us with our needs. Like so many of the children we were caring for, he too grew up an orphan. He was found in a dump by an old woman who took him home and nurtured him until he was well enough to go live in an overcrowded orphanage. Jonathan proudly mounted Smile Power stickers onto his vehicle and proceeded to perform miracles during our journey. He got us from gas station to gas station in areas where they were very sparse indeed. We were able to visit 2 extra and very remote villages because of his willingness to drive the tortuous roads and juggle fuel needs of the vehicles. Jonathan also dealt with fuel and operation of the generators needed to run the clinics.
We took portable dental equipment, our own food & drinking water, plus water for operating in the clinic. In the places we visited, most people had never seen any kind of dentist and none had any idea that a tooth could even be fixed! By the third day of our clinic, word had spread and people started pointing to their bad teeth asking for "cement".
People of all ages came to us for help. Mothers brought young babies with jaws swollen from infected teeth. Grandfathers came to us for relief from long term tooth pain. People of all ages came, forming a long line. We worked from early morning until it was too dark to work safely. People continued to come - many waited in line for three days to be seen by the dental team. Our efforts were rewarded with warm hugs, big smiles and sometimes tears, as our new friends left the clinic feeling better from our care.
In addition to dental care, and thanks to the generosity of our supporters at home, we were able to get food out to four children who lived very remotely and had nothing to eat. These kids had been sharing one tattered rag as a sleeping blanket on the dirt floor of their failing shack. We delivered blankets, clothing, and enough food to last 3 months.
One of Smile Power's endeavors is to train local people to take responsibility for continuation of the care that Smile Power initiates. To accomplish this in Uganda , Smile Power is sponsoring 4 local care takers in education programs. We have sent two students to a "dental boot camp" offered by a local dentist, and two young women to school to study nursing.
Guatemala:
Guatemala was also added to the places Smile Power offers services. We worked together with the AGROS organization in Guatemala to deliver extraordinary dental services to the village at the end of the road in the IXIL Mountains. It was necessary to take everything we needed into the village with us, and the trucks provided by AGROS proved to be worthy of our trust.
Our fearless triage "office managers" cheerfully guide patients who had not heard of dental services before our arrival, into the dental clinic for care. Our wonderful volunteer team works into the evening to see every person who desires care. The volunteers remain cheerful, describing these long hot days in the clinic as a wonderful experience.
Jamaica:
We are seeing the results of our education efforts in Jamaica . During our initial outreaches, our dental care education teams were introduced to the children as "people who are going to teach you to brush your teeth." Now, they are introduced as "the people who are going to teach you how to keep your teeth." In Jamaica it was simply expected that ones teeth would be gone at an early age. Because of our educational efforts, we are beginning to see healthier teeth from year to year. The children now understand that with proper care, they can actually have teeth as adults. Making such a huge difference in people's health is very gratifying!
Contact us if you are ready to join us in our volunteer dental clinics! |
