The Dental Team is an essential part of the PSE School Continuity Programme. Along with some Khmer Dentistry degree students and some PSE dentists, the European volunteers work hard to make children happier by improving their smiles. Along with treatments, they offer workshops to teach the kids about dental hygiene and good food habits.
Before the children from the different Projects take their morning showers, they are given a toothbrush. This way they learn that it is part of their personal hygiene to brush their teeth as well as their body. After the shower, the kids make lines and await the Dental Team to check their mouths and divide them into two categories. Given the scarce time that the European volunteers have in the few weeks of the Projects, they can only directly work on the mouths of those who have urgent issues.
The two categories are: delayable and non-delayable. The two European dentist volunteers mark the children’s hands with a heart if it is the first case, or with a circle if it is the second. The circle-marked kids receive a dental intervention, while the heart marked ones will be placed for later care. “It is funny, because all the kids try to get a circle drawn on their hand as if they want to be taken to the dentist immediately”, notices Lili, a European volunteer from Kean Svay CSC.
For some of the kids in the Camps, this is the first time seeing a dentist
The criteria used by the Team to determine whether it is urgent or not to get into action with a child is if they have pain or if there is an infection. They ask the kids “Chhu?”, which means “pain” in Khmer. The volunteers carry their mobile unit for these actions. For some of the kids in Khean Svay, this is the first time seeing a dentist. This means that most of them have some sort of infection or issue, as it is not part of their daily routine to brush their teeth.
“Rather than a hygiene issue, we are talking about a nutrition problem”
Another problem that leads to the bad condition of the children’s teeth is the lack of access to foods that contribute to good oral hygiene. “Rather than a hygiene issue, we are talking about a nutrition problem”, states Ruth, a European specialized surgery dentist from the Dental Team. She has observed that the children eat at all times throughout the day. This means that they are constantly exposed to cavities, as they do not brush their teeth with regularity. “I believe it is a matter of lack of health education: these families do not know the effects of the food they ingest and the importance of their oral hygiene”, suggests Ruth.
The Khmer dental students, who collaborate with the Team, offer workshops. These workshops are crucial to teach the kids about the effects of the food they intake, to give them hygiene techniques to maintain a healthy mouth, and to prove to them the relevance of taking on new habits. The objective is to let them know that proper buccal care is necessary in their lives. The children receive a toothbrush in their CSC, but what is more important is that they give it the use it is meant to have. Long Kimsuang, a Khmer dental student says that, after the workshops, at least she hopes that the kids remember to brush their teeth and when and how to do it. “I tried to give toothpaste to a kid who was holding his toothbrush upside down, he did not know how it worked”, describes Marta, a European pediatric dentist.
The focus of the actions being held by the Dental Team is not only short-termed
The focus of the actions being held by the Dental Team are not only short-termed. The purpose of the explorations is to keep track of all the kids from the different CSC in order to treat them later on. This is a task that dentists from PSE work on throughout the school year. For this reason, only some of the children from the CSC are being treated with urgency, while the rest will be looked at later on.
The role of these volunteers is worthy of admiration. They have patience with the children, and help them understand that going through dental treatment will end the pain that they were having or were soon going to feel. PSE’s dentists work with determination.
Some sets of teeth checked by the European volunteers are almost completely ruined. As said before, in certain areas the access to medical attention is weaker. This means that in some CSCs, families have less access to resources than others. Unfortunately, poverty plays a determining role in the health of PSE´s children. The diseases often originate in their mouths and only with a good treatment, can they be stopped from spreading to other parts of the body. Some kids live in pain due to these kinds of problems, and it becomes part of their lives. The focus of the Dental Team is to ease up the children’s lives by improving the quality of their dental health. “We will leave Cambodia having helped kids that can not afford to go to the dentist or to have access to good nutrition, but the work here is not done”, clarifies Marta.
In addition to this, an excessive ingestion of flour during the creation of the teeth varnish can lead to a decreased quality of the same. “This, together with the constant intake of starch present in the rice that they eat every day, produces a significant increase of cavities of the population of Cambodia”, explains Ruth.
Sok Danin, one of the head dentists from the PSE Dental Team, believes that although changing the kids’ habits is necessary, it is complicated if they do not start when they are young. “We have been doing workshops with them for many years, we explain to them that they should not eat too many sweets and that brushing their teeth is essential”, she adds, “but the families should also be teaching their kids these sorts of things”. Danin considers that there should be more seminars aimed at the families, to have them be an example to their children by keeping up a good dental hygiene.
One word: satisfaction
marta
“Some kids had their four teeth quadrants in need of attention”, claims Marta. “We can only do so much for now but it is a tough job that the PSE Dental Team will have to keep working on”, she adds. Ruth concludes by adding that cooperation from the parents is necessary and that, if treated on time, the children will improve their oral health considerably. Helping children by improving their mouths is something that Marta does on a daily basis. However, she describes this role in the School Continuity Programme with one word: “satisfaction”.
