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DENTAL HEALTH BROUGHT TO REFUGEE CHILDREN
Thanks to the dedication of Queensland, Australia dentist Dr Colin Morrison and his wife Andrea, we have seen hundreds of refugee children provided with their first ever dental care.
A dental team visiting one of the refugee camps near the Thai border with Burma in August 2009 examined 366 school children and provided much needed treatment to 148 of them. Most were students at one of Effective Aid International's schools and the team were able to free many from chronic dental pain and infection.
The work was carried out at a newly constructed dental clinic which has been completely built by refugee labour. The facility proved completely satisfactory, apart from a water problem during a torrential tropical downpour! This was soon rectified and the problem hopefully alleviated for the future. The clinic contains two treatment rooms and an examination area, waiting room and storeroom, as well as the provision to clean and sterilise all equipment.
Included in the program is the provision of dental hygeine education to refugee children. This is being done by a group of senior refugee students who have been trained and equipped as Dental Educators and given the necessary knowledge and skills. The team also began to train some of the refugees as dental assistants with a goal over the next three years to have dental therapists manning the clinic and providing basic care on a full time basis. When this is achieved visiting teams will only have to treat those with more complex needs.
The next team of dentists is due to visit the refugee camps in March 2010.
Here is Colin and Andrea’s story:
“On September 18th 2008 Colin, myself and our two children went to Northern Thailand to visit some children’s homes and a school run by Effective Aid International in one of the refugee camps.
Ian Aitchison, the Chairman of Effective Aid and his wife Judy took us into the camp and while there discussed with us the lack of dental care among the refugee community. This led to a request that Colin examine some of the children with the idea of setting up a dental clinic within the school to attend to the dental needs of the almost 500 students aged between 6 and 20 years.
A quick question and answer time in school assembly found that none of the students had ever seen a dentist! Further questioning established that more than 60 were experiencing dental pain at that time.
A temporary “dental surgery” was set up on the stage of the school hall. Our “clean area” was a blue plastic chair and the “dirty area” a plastic rubbish bag. Colin examined about 60 children by sitting them on the chair while kneeling on the concrete floor using a miner’s lamp on his head as illumination. The temperature was about 32 degrees accompanied by extreme humidity.
After about two hours Colin’s back and knees gave out and he had a short rest.
He continued by sitting the remaining “patients” on a table so he could examine them from a standing position. We documented all our findings with written statistics and photographs.
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A survey of approximately 500 children between the ages of 6 and 20 showed none had ever received dental care.
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Examination of 60 children who were experiencing dental pain brought extremely distressing results.
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Tooth stumps, severe decay and abscesses were present in almost every child.
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Every child examined would be classed as having severe dental disease.
By the time Colin had examined the third child I was in tears! The decay and abscesses were almost too much for me to handle. Three children, one boy aged 6 and two girls aged 8 and 10 are in desperate trouble with almost every tooth rotten to the core. The children are generally very small for their age and suffer from constant ear and stomach aches.
We had to stop the examinations when we ran out of gloves but knew we had just touched the tip of the iceberg!
The children stood in groups praying for their toothache to be healed and for us to be able to come back with the proper equipment so we could help them.
To walk away two days later and leave those precious children in such need and pain was extremely difficult.
We have undertaken to both raise funds and set up the “Glory2Glory Dental Clinic”. We have been given a hut in the camp, which will need to be re-roofed and have its bamboo walls replaced with timber. There is much work ahead of us.
We returned to Australia motivated to see this happen and bring much needed dental care to the children of Maela Refugee Camp. Raising this much money in the current economic climate seems like a huge task, but I keep thinking of the 500 children who are relying on me.
Can you help by donating or raising funds to assist in establishing this project as soon as possible?”
Regards, Colin & Andrea Morrison
If you would like to talk with Colin or Andrea about this, they can be reached at:
Art of Dentistry, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556.
Telephone: 07 5445 8755.
This is an Effective Aid International approved project and as such all donations over $2 are tax deductible for Australian taxpayers. Donors from the USA can also receive tax benefits by donating through our American partners Bibleway Inc.
Please go to the donations page of this website for detailed information on how to donate and be sure to note that your donations are for the Dental Clinic. |
