Dutch dentists in Nepal
Hi! We’re Isabel and Anne. Last July, we both graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Dentistry from the University of Groningen.
Instead of jumping straight into our Master’s, we decided to explore a bit more of the world first and that’s how we ended up at Maya.
From other volunteers, we quickly learned that you don’t need any dental knowledge to notice how much can still be improved when it comes to the children’s oral health. There’s a lot of candy, and not much brushing. Some children only visit the dentist when they’re in pain, while others simply don’t have access to one at all. There’s still a lot of progress to be made in terms of prevention.
With prevention as our main goal, we started preparing an educational session on oral health. Anne received donated toothpaste from her dentist (Espenbos Dental Clinic), and we bought toothbrushes for all the Maya children.
During the lesson, we discussed what the children already knew about teeth. We asked questions like: how many teeth does a person have? Why do we lose our baby teeth? Why are teeth important? How do cavities form? And what can we do to keep our teeth healthy?
By asking these questions, we hoped to get the children thinking about the importance of oral hygiene. We ended the lesson by giving each child a toothbrush and toothpaste and brushing our teeth together.
Finally, we took the time to do a brief dental check-up. We noticed that almost all of the children had cavities, and some of them were experiencing pain as well. With the budget provided by Maya, we made a priority list to ensure that the children with the most urgent needs could visit a dentist for treatment.
While there’s funding to help some of the children, we hope that more of them will be able to receive care in the future. But most of all, we hope that our brushing lessons made an impact and that the children are already taking a little better care of their teeth!
