Dental Voluntary Work: the ups and downs

international | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday August 09, 2005 14:11 by Ceara and Kev

The first in a series of letters to indymedia Ireland from two Irish activists who have arranged, entirely under their own initiative, to travel to Uganda to assist in training local dental staff, and in the running of local dental clinics. – via Paul Baynes

Our background: Ceara is a dental hygienist working full time in the Health Board. Kevin is a dentist employed in the Dublin Dental Hospital.

We’ve always felt in our heart and soul to try our hands at dental voluntary work. As we look at it, we are fortunate to have a skill that we can travel with and be involved with voluntary work.

Saying this is one thing: putting it into action a whole different scenario. Three months ago we naively decided to achieve our aim. The main questions we asked ourselves are:

Where do I go?
Who needs the services most?
How long do I go for?
How much will it cost?
What vaccinations do I need?
Can I get time off work?
What instruments and materials do I need?

The month of August seemed a good time to go. We both organised time off with a mixture of special leave and annual leave. Originally we planned to go to Kenya but the clinic there was closed. We searched the internet for dental clinics in demand of our services and sent plenty of emails, from contacts we found on websites. Within a matter of days, we got a response from Barbara Koffeman. Barbara is a retired dental hygienist who works in collaboration with Christian Relief Uganda. She has been praying for a dental team to visit Uganda for many years now. She kindly refers to us as the “answer to her prayers”.

Our work will include basic primary dental care, oral health promotion, establishing rural dental clinics, training staff, and visiting outreach centres, schools and orphanages.

Our base is a compound in Kamuli about four hours drive from Kampala which is the capital. The compound consists of an orphanage, school and medical centre. There is a very basic dental surgery on site. On many occasions the surgery closes due to shortage of dental materials especially local anaesthetic. A local health care worker with basic dental skills carries out emergency care.

The flights to Uganda and all the vaccinations didn’t take much hassle except financially of course, costing about €1,800 each. Overall the most stressful and time-consuming obstacle we have experienced over the past few months is dental instruments and materials. You wouldn’t possibly velieve the amount of phone calls, faxes and emails to different dental suppliers we made, the vast majority not wanting to help. It’s so disheartening when you’re let down by so many false promises.

On a positive note Promed, GSK, Dentsply, McCormack Dental, HSE and Dublin Dental Hospital kindly donated vital instruments and materials for our project. So all we had to do is transport the equipment there. How simple can that be? Well, it costs €2,600 to send the stock, so it was another dilemma to fundraise the case.

We organised a benefit night in the Life Bar on Abbey St., Dublin 1. Having friends on the music scene in Dublin, we had no problem getting a few singers, bands and DJs to entertain the crowd. Many local businesses kindhearedly donated raffle prizes. The night went very well. The total amount raised on the night was €1,153. Friends and colleagues who could not make it to the night gave personal donations. All in all we have our target.

So that’s the ups and downs so far. The tip of the iceberg so to speak, the rest is yet to come. We will let you know how we get on.

Bye for now,

Kev and Ceara.