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L E T T E R T O T H E E D I T O R
Bridge2Aid talk BAOS conference 2012
Accepted: 10 January 2013
Sir,As an active member of ‘Smile Star’, a dental charityworking in Kenya, India, and Uganda, I write toapplaud Bridge2Aid in the amazing work that they doin Tanzania and also to acknowledge the talk given by amember of the Bridge2Aid team at the recent BritishAssociation of Oral Surgeons conference in Edinburgh.
However, having worked for charities in the past, I doresent the implication given at the talk that providingactual treatment to needy patients in poorer countriesonce or twice a year could potentially be detrimental tothe local population. Of course, there is no denying thatthe ideal situation is to train local health-care workers todo the job themselves, which is the aim of Bridge2Aid.Smile Star has also invested in training local dental per-sonnel and it now has a full-time dental surgeonworking intheSmileStarclinic inGujarat, India.
Training local personnel seems to work extremelywell in Tanzania and in some parts of India, but havingbeen brought up in Kenya and being accustomed tothe poverty, corruption, lack of infrastructure andbureaucracy there, I can say with confidence that thisdoes not work here. From previous experience, medi-cations kept in the premises overnight have disap-peared and the local health-care workers have usedequipment and instruments left behind such as pres-sure cookers for sterilisation, to cook rice instead!
The work that Smile Star does is to try and get poor,deprived patients out of dental pain, and all members ofthe Smile Star team are there with the best of intentions,having taken time of busy work schedules at their ownexpense to try to help such needy patients. Surely, whencircumstances are such that a permanent ‘surgery’ andpermanent staff cannot be established, being able toprovide pain relief to as many patients as possible whohave absolutely no access to dental treatment is betterthannotproviding that treatmentatall.Any implicationthat services such as those provided by the Smile Starteam are ‘detrimental’ to the local population, as sug-gested in this talk, isquite frankly inaccurate.
One hopes that in the near future, the government ofcountries such as Kenya will make it easier to providethe local expertise and the facilities required to keeppatients free of dental pain, but till that day, I urge otherdentists to consider taking a short period out of theirbusy schedules to use their skills and join Smile Star inthe wonderful work that it does.
Further details for Smile Star can be found at http://www.smilestarcharity.co.uk
Dr Nishma SomaiaSpeciality Doctor in OMFS, Barnet and Chase Farm
Hospitals, Enfield, UKemail: [email protected]
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104 Oral Surgery 6 (2013) 104.
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
