Charity work
Raising awareness from Dunoon to Malawi
Nigel and Vicky Milne, from the Hollies Dental Practice in Dunoon, describe their recent aid visit to Malawi
I
t is a long way to Malawi from Dunoon but, in September 2012, we left the Hollies Dental Prac- tice on the west coast of
Scotland and visited Malawi with a charity named The Raven Trust to help them assess the dental need in Northern Malawi. The Raven Trust has been established for 15 years and has done lots of work, including the building of three dental surgeries in three separate mission hospitals in Ekwendeni, Embangweni and Livingstonia. However, these surgeries have never been able to run sustainable services. We spent three and a half
weeks trying to establish what is needed and how to go about setting up a service that would be helpful to these local communities. They cover a total population of around 300,000 people and, at present, two of the hospitals have no dental service at all and the third hospital in Livingstonia has a very basic service which consists of two clinical officers who, along with their other responsibilities within the hospital, take out teeth when it is required. We found that the surgeries
were poorly equipped with old and often not working equipment and little, if any, materials or consumables. We spent three days sorting out the surgery in Ekwendeni; this involved throwing out a lot of useless equipment which was beyond repair, sorting
24 Scottish Dental magazine
through lots of tools which had been donated by well-meaning dentists, cleaning and scrub- bing the room and setting up suitable sterilising procedures before we managed to see some patients. We found that every mouth we looked in required some dental work as people who have some sugar in their diets have little money to spend on toothbrushes and tooth- paste and most had never seen a dentist before. The average wage in Malawi is £1.42/day. A tube of toothpaste would cost a day and a half’s wages with a toothbrush costing a further day’s wages. There is a huge need for
dental services here as people have nowhere to go if they have dental problems and many people we saw had been suffering from dental pain for a very long time. We were able
to donate some new and valu- able equipment given to us by GDEC, which was gratefully received and hopefully will be put to good use eventually. We found the experience
very sobering and it has made us very aware of how lucky we are to live in a developed country where we take so much for granted. We have now joined with the Raven Trust and set up a sub charity called Smileawi with the hope that we can help the people in these areas.
Our main objectives are:
• to relieve pain and carry out basic dental treatment • to equip, upgrade and main- tain the dental facilities at the three centres • to recruit, train and support local staff at the three centres • to set up oral health promotion and preventive programmes
• to implement best practice • to provide toothbrushes and toothpaste where possible • to supply three portable units for remote dental clinics • to encourage our dental colleagues to consider visiting Malawi for a working holiday • to collect donations of money and resources to help support these objectives. If anyone has anything they
would like to donate, be it toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental equipment, materials, money or time, please get in touch with us at smileawi@
gmail.com Items can be uplifted by
arrangement. We have already collected a dental X-ray unit from the RAH in Paisley! In order to keep costs down,
volunteers are asked to pay for their own travel, food and accommodation. Over the festive period
this year, we ran a Christmas Appeal at our dental practice and managed to raise £687, with more than 500 toothbrushes donated by our patients. Once again this was supported by the good people at NES with a further £70 donated from their Christmas card appeal. This money will allow us
to buy a portable dental chair and equipment to take out to some of the remote rural communities.
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This article first appeared in the Winter 2013 edition of the British Dental Nurses’ Journal
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