Dentistry
Dental Care in Uganda
The importance of daily brushing and regular dental care is not widely understood in Uganda - sometimes even by closely allied professional health workers. Dental care, when it is sought, is expensive. This is prohibitive for most of the population but dental disease or caries is still a common disease in children. Less than 20% of those who suffer dental pain will receive treatment. The levels of dental decay and poor oral hygiene can affect the overall wellbeing of children and impact significantly on their performance at school.
Dental Health Education
.jpg "Children outside department learning about care of their teeth")
Community
dental health education projects in Kagando have begun. Children learn
health messages through dance, singing
and drama how to fight diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Now dental
caries has been added to the list. Together with the training and on-going
support the clinical dental officers Peterson and Eliud, it is our hope and prayer that a whole community will benefit from
increasing access to dental screening, treatment and education.
Dental Surgery at Kagando
The UK dental practice of Margaret and Jean-Claude Barrault, dentist and practice manager respectively, has had
a formal link with Kagando since 2000,
since when they have provided three reconditioned surgeries and financial
support for the training of a clinical
dental officer and a nurse. They were
initiators and founder
Trustees of 'Friends of Kagando'. In 2008
Jean-Claude
supervised completion of an installation of upgraded equipment from one of
Margaret’s UK dental surgeries with new small equipment,
instruments and dental
materials. In Kagando today there
is a modern clinical dental set up in full working order ready to be used by
visiting volunteer dentists to assist the two young newly qualified resident
clinical dental officers.
