Barbara Koffman, a retired dental hygenist, saw the desperate need for dental services and education, especially for the poorest and those in remorte areas of Uganda. She began to pray for a dentist to offer his/her services to work there for a short period. An Irish dentist, Kevin & a hygenist, Ceara, were the first to offer their services in summer 2005 to work in & around the Namwendwa clinic.
Kevin and Ceara with Dr. Tigawalana, the chief medical officer of the county
They also set up a new clinic at Bugaya 22 km from Maria’s Care. This is an area which has never before had any dental services. They also held much needed outreach clinics in rural areas & conducted training sessions, especially at the clinic at Namwendwa.
Kevin reported: “Bugaya is a sub county of 55,000 people. It is serviced by a type three health centre, which means it has access to emergency treatment, a pregnancy ward, pharmaceuticals and dental services. It was disheartening when we visited. No drugs had been available for months, meaningless prescriptions were the mainstay of medical treatment, though there was no pharmacy in the sub county. A door labeled “injection room” housed two empty boxes of needles. The only equipment we saw for the whole hospital was indescribably inadequate. We set about setting up a dental clinic, spending our last two weeks on it. Having put our sights on an outhouse, where the night watchman slept, we left an invitation for a member of staff to be trained the following day. The training lasted for two weeks, and is now continued by Lillian, our dental nurse, and will continue for the foreseeable future. We got a chair and equipment, we even painted the walls, and our new clinic was ready.”
The 1st patient in the new dental clinic was a lady in her early forties who had attended a ‘dentist’ in the community the previous day complaining of toothache. The ‘dentist’ had decoronated the lower right 7 and 8. The retained roots were successfully removed by Kevin in the first procedure of Bugaya dental clinic.
Download Dentist Kevin’s report of his Ugandan experience.
