Visiting the school

Today we had our first day of visiting a school. We took the dental van just around the corner to Vila Central, a primary school. Gloria (dental assistant from New Zealand who will has committed her life to volunteering here for the next few years with her wonderful husband Neville - godsends!) and I were in the dental van performing treatment after our team leader Viv and Bob (our Ni-Van) dental assistant/therapist) screened the students and assessed their need for further treatment. Agnetha, Alicia and Michelle treated adults and other children at the clinic today and we will all rotate this way for the next two weeks.

The dental van was a first dental visit for almost all our patients. In each school all kinder and Year 1 students (4-6 years old) are being screened by us. In Australia we try to encourage children to have their first dental visit a few years earlier so they are familiar with the dentist, hopefully haven't experienced any disease so can focus on preventing decay and if there is any evidence of disease there is still an opportunity for early intervention.

Viv conducted 80 examinations today! Incredible! In addition every patient had a fluoride treatment of duraphat varnish by Viv, Bob or I. The fluoride treatment will help to prevent decay by strengthening their enamel, or in cases that already had decay (most) it will help remineralise early decays. If a child was assessed to need treatment (the majority) they would line up at the dental van. 30 children came through the van today, around half of those were just for fluoride treatments which are very quick and the other half were for restorative treatment (fillings - all in glass ionomer cement and without local anaesthesia, which is much quicker working in a little child's mouth) or extractions. The children cope very well without local anaesthetic for restorations but still don't like it much when they have it for an extraction! The children really are just the same as Aussie kids in so many other ways also. A little girl said to me 'you gonna stick me?!' and I tried not to laugh because it sounded so funny. The children have quite good English, as Bislama is based 95% on English and 5% French. I'm trying to pick up some Bislama and today I used a lot of 'bigfela openem' which roughly (hopefully) translates to 'open your mouth wide'.

Unfortunately we identified many children with grossly decayed teeth that needed treatment that wasn't able to be completed today but we are looking to try get these children into the clinic another time in the next two weeks. Another difficulty is completing so much treatment on such a young child, as they become fearful and upset in such a new environment. In Australia many of these children would meet the criteria to have all their treatment performed under a general anaesthetic but unfortunately that isn't an option here.

I think we are all feeling a bit tired and overwhelmed after a big few days but are also feeling really energised knowing that we are contributing to making an improvement. It does feel a little like our small bit of treatment is just a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done but it's encouraging to think of the positive aspects that could come from it - like knowing that even if we don't get all the treatment that these children need done that we have hopefully identified an area of need so that volunteers and resources might be dedicated further to these school children.

Gloria kindly took these photos (we couldn't unlock the door after lunchtime so the teacher put a child through the window to open it for us!):

In case you think we're working too hard here is our view from dinner:

Tata
Susan