News
Volunteering. A former community cop from North Berwick is looking to help improve dental health in east Africa
Scaling the charity heights
Dental health charity Bridge2Aid are looking for teams of three to six people to prove their teamwork and stamina in the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge.
The challenge is to scale the summits of Pen-y-ghent (694 metres), Whernside (736 metres) and Ingleborough (723 metres) in just 12 hours.
The event takes place on Saturday 31 March and is being run for B2A by Eight Point Two, a special- ised organiser of challenging events, and who will provide qualified instructors, marshals for the mountains, commu- nication systems and full support.
The cost of registra- tion is £20 per person and teams must commit to raise at least £200 per person before the event. Practice Plan and IDH have already entered two teams each and there have been verbal commitments from several other companies in the dental industry.
® To find out more about the B2A challenge, go to
www.bridge2aid. org or contact Kerry at fundraising@
bridge2aid.org
14 Scottish Dental magazine
Help needed to rebuild Rwandans’ oral health
A retired community police officer from East Lothian is looking for dental volunteers to help provide oral health advice and treatment in rural Rwanda. Allan Walker, who spent the
last ı0 years of his 32-year police career on the community beat in North Berwick, has set up a charitable concern called Build Rwanda which is dedicated to improving the lives of the local population. So far he has been involved
setting up worker coopera- tives and micro finance in the country as well as taking a group of East Lothian youngsters out to volunteer in the small east African nation last year. On his last visit he stayed
with a Rwandan family outside Kigali and noticed that their oral health was quite poor. On returning he decided to look into the possibility of enlisting dental volunteers to go out with the aim of treating local people and providing advice on their general oral health.
of oral health education is to blame. He said: “I think it is partly
diet but also lack of knowledge and education as well. I mean, when you look at an orphanage with 600 kids, what chance have you got?” Allan is looking for help and
advice at this stage with the aim of sending volunteers out to Rwanda in 20ı3 to start treating patients and provide oral health education.
Allan believes that the changing diet of the popula- tion – which is becoming more westernised – allied to a lack
Grampian dentist joins Maverick charity
MOROCCAN AID
An Aberdeenshire dentist is heading out to north Africa later this year to provide much- needed dental care to children in a small Moroccan village. Verena Tunn-Salihoglu of Oldmacher Dental Care in Bridge of Don, will be travelling to El Jabah in the north east of the country in September with oral health charity Dental Mavericks. Verena met Tony and Cally Gedge, the husband and wife
® To contact Allan, email build.
rwanda@hotmail.co.uk
team behind the charity, at a dental conference in Spain last year and donated 200 tooth- brushes to help the charity promote oral health in the region. Verena said: “It is very
important for us to support Dental Mavericks because, without our help, these children would never have access to a dentist, even if they could afford it, as there are not enough dentists in Morocco to treat the whole population. “I’ve always wanted to give something back to children in need but I was bit anxious and unsure as to how to go about it. This has given me the oppor- tunity and I plan on grabbing it with both hands.”
® For more information on Dental Mavericks, visit
www.dentalmavericks.org
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