Dental Missions
Dominican Republic 2011
Dominican Republic Dental Mission
While attending a seminar near San Antonio Texas, in January I was asked to be part of a team that was going to the Dominican Republic to participate in a Dental Mission. I had felt in the past that was something I would like to do… some day, but my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer that week. When she died so quickly, I made the commitment to honor her memory by going then.
The trip was life-changing. With only 3 weeks to get the lists of what to take, how to prepare, ask dental companies to donate materials we would need, and get my typhoid, malaria, hepatitis vaccines, I didn’t have time to worry or to feel sorry for myself over the loss of Mom
Suddenly I was on my way to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with some clothes, some mosquito repellent, dental instruments and supplies, and items to leave at the orphanage that organizes the trip for the children there. I had no idea of what the week would be like.
We went out into 4 different Bateys (communities, some of which are former banana plantations, and one banana washing station) where people have nothing. They are kind, peaceful, beautiful people. The children have to go to school until about 12 years old. Then they have nothing. They do not even have running water. One little girl I examined (about 10 years old) was the oldest of about 4 children. Our guide told me that he had met her the year before sucking water from a broken well pipe and spitting it into an old plastic bottle to give to her younger siblings so they would not be without water.
There are no weddings or graduations or health care, or clothes. When I saw a tee shirt worn by one of the children with Kings Point on it, I knew that person would never even know what Kings Point was. The beach is only about 12 miles from where they live, yet most have never seen it.
There was usually a church somewhere in the community. Our first Batey had a church from which pews were moved to the side to serve as counters on which to put dental supplies. In one and a half hours, we turned the church into a dental clinic. The long lines quickly formed as people heard there were dentists there that day. People were given bracelets to mark their place on line.
No one was overweight. Everyone had dental disease. I guess refined sugar was one of their few pleasures, but not enough to eat in excess. Just sucking on the sugar was enough to turn their teeth into mush.
Our goal was to treat the children as young as possible to avoid the inevitable extractions that eventually need to be done. Using air abrasion instead of a drill, we didn’t have to use novocaine. We removed decay from as many teeth as the patient could tolerate and filled them with a special filling material that would give them protection for a long time.
My other motive was to master air abrasion dentistry and to see if we could provide this quality service in this primitive setting (no running water or electricity) that has routinely been provided in Refugio Texas for two generations. In all children, if we can get to back teeth as they erupt, we can prevent the chewing surface from ever decaying, we eliminate over 80% of all future dentistry. I describe our trip as being “spectacularly successful” in terms of reaching our goals. Not only were we able to provide the same service there that is provided here in the states, but we also saw that an expanded duty assistant could provide this invaluable service. This would greatly reduce the cost of dental care, both in dollars and in loss of tooth structure, to kids everywhere.
The other interesting thing is that the kids on the loading dock of the banana plantation were getting a higher level of dental service than what is available to the vast majority of American kids. The procedure works to prevent decay nearly 100% of the time whereas 50% of sealants fall off in five years.
Most of these “mission trips” in dentistry are just for putting out the fires. By the time these people in these remote areas reach their late teens, many of these teeth require extensive procedures to salvage the teeth, so most dental trips are designed just to do whatever surgery is necessary to alleviate pain and eliminate infection. I don’t take out many teeth here, just like a lot of other general dentists, so I’m certainly not interested in going into a primitive setting and extracting a bunch of rotting teeth. Also, when we did intervene in the decay process, we could only treat two or three teeth on one patient in the time it took us to “bullet proof” (using the air abrasion technique) four younger kids for life. Our time was better spent in preventing the future need for extractions rather than alleviating the aftermath of traditional dentistry.
For all of these types of trips each professional delivering a service, be it medical or dental, it takes two support people in the background doing whatever is necessary to keep the professionals operational. Just having a support person designated as a “gopher” was invaluable. One person did nothing but oversee the group, and “go fer” whatever was instantly needed, be it a drink of water, a gadget, new batteries for the headlamps, etc. Our support group was a bunch of Pepperdine University (a Christian college in Malibu, California) students who gave up the usual debauchery associated with spring break to make a difference, and they did. I can’t say enough good things about those kids from Pepperdine.
We have no idea how fortunate we are until we spend time with people who have absolutely nothing, and it is a real wake up call for any teenager or young adult to see how most of the world does without the things they take for granted. This type of mission trip will change their lives. They WILL come back with a totally new perspective in life.