Charity dentistry

The two teams made up of 21 dentists and dental nurses, were based in remote areas of the Mwanza region of North West Tanzania where they operated out of basic clinics and administered emergency dental treatment to the local Tanzanians.

Katherine Opie-Smith who works at The Dental Practice in Dulwich Village, London and was the clinical lead for one of the teams said, ‘It was a successful trip, with a very happy and unified team. We all had a great feeling of achievement having got another batch of clinical officers through training. There were one or two interesting cases, along with the usual batch of long-suffering patients who we were glad to help out of pain. One still marvels at the stoicism of the rural population.’

Each trained clinical officer can treat approximately 12,000 patients per year and since Bridge2Aid started running the Dental Volunteer Programme in 2004, over 1m Tanzanians have now had access to pain-relieving dentistry.