I first heard about Bridge2aid at a South Wales foundation training study day and since then I had always been very interested in volunteering with them. I work at mydentist, and every year they sponsor and fund two clinicians to travel to Tanzania. Whilst reading mydentist’s internal clinical magazine I saw they were taking on applications for the next trip; I applied and felt very lucky to be selected to take part in the trip to the Morogoro region of Tanzania in September 2017.
Once selected, mydentist linked me up with the UK bridge2aid team who were fantastic. They were really helpful with providing advice on Visas, vaccinations and arranging flights to Tanzania. They work very closely with the local Tanzanian team and everything ran very smoothly – it’s clear there’s lots of hard work behind the scenes to make the trip possible. The mydentist practice in Tonypandy, South Wales where I work as an associate were also very supportive of me making the trip, and it was great to update them with video diaries during my time in Africa.
My time in Tanzania
The main aim of the trip was to train clinical officers to be able to safely and competently carry out extractions, thus being able to provide emergency dental treatment for rural communities in the long term. We had two key roles during the programme; providing emergency treatment ourselves, which was really rewarding but also very challenging having to work in a completely different clinical environment. We also had the role of teaching the clinical officers. This was the aspect of the trip I enjoyed most, I was really impressed by how quickly they picked up the skills required to extract teeth, certainly much faster than when I was training as an undergraduate. The clinical officers had a huge amount of enthusiasm and eagerness to learn this new skill set. They all passed the programme which was really rewarding to see and be a part of.
Bridge2aid do a lot of location research and preparation for each programme, so they reach rural communities with very little or no access to dental care. As a result, most of the patients presented with a high caries rates, especially on the lower molars due to the habit of chewing sugar cane. I had anticipated seeing this high dental need prior to travelling out to Tanzania but it was really difficult to hear clinical histories from patients who had been suffering from dental pain for over a year, it was obviously impacting on their quality of life and ability to work and provide for their families. The patients and members of the local community were all extremely grateful for the work that Bridge2aid were providing and word of the clinic definitely spread as patient numbers grew throughout the week at both sites.
What did surprise me was how many of the Masai we treated at the clinic had very good oral hygiene as a result of using Miswak; a teeth cleaning twig made from the Salvadora persica tree.
Rewarding challenges
One of the biggest challenges was working in a clinic without a dental chair or electricity; it was a steep learning curve on the first day getting used to using a head-torch and non-adjustable chair, but we soon adapted to the environment – it did however make me really appreciate my surgery back in South Wales. The language barrier also posed an issue but the clinical officers we worked with spoke very good English which made translating with patients much easier. I did make an effort to learn some Swahili phrases before the trip which patients seemed to like, although I’m sure my pronunciation wasn’t great.
Throughout the trip there were some challenging paediatric patients who presented in pain but were understandably nervous in an unfamiliar environment. Such instances required a true team effort with members of the nursing team and clinical officers doing an excellent job with distraction and reassuring both the child and family during treatments. Although this was often a difficult situation for me, I left the clinic later in the day to see the patient laughing and playing with their friends outside; it was great to leave seeing the positive difference we had made with the treatment
A new perspective
I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many remote countries outside of dentistry but it was great to have such a close interaction with the rural communities in Tanzania; the patients we treated were all so friendly and really appreciative of the work we were providing. It was great to experience such an amazing culture and learn about life in Africa. It’s definitely given me a new perspective on how lucky we are in the UK to have the National Health Service, it was really upsetting at times to hear stories of how difficult it is for some patients to access basic emergency treatment and how far some patients were willing to travel to attend our clinic.
From what I’ve seen Bridge2aid is making a significant difference in Tanzania, mainly because the dental volunteer programme is centred around training clinical officers to ensure that there is a legacy left behind after volunteers return back to the UK. On the last day at each site we had a very high number of patients and managed to treat everyone who attended, but also left in the knowledge that the community would continue to have access to emergency dental treatment in future. On successful completion of the programme each clinical officer was presented with an instrument kit which contained everything they needed to safely run an emergency dental clinic.
I would encourage anyone to volunteer with Bridge2Aid; the whole experience was one I’ll never forget.