What started as a ripple in 2010 with the first visit of the newly formed Dental Mavericks charity to beautiful Morocco in North Africa, this year grew into a wave of dental care in El Jebah at the foot of the Rif mountains.
Let me introduce you to the 2011 Dental Mavericks team who for eight days stepped out of a privileged life in Europe to help a group of school children who's lives aren't blessed with the dental care we take for granted.
The group, of which I am privileged to be a founding member, includes dentists and their support staff from across the UK and joined this year in their efforts from Belgium ( Domien our marvellous guide and translator) and Spain ( team Gedge and the lovely Jess ) .
Why do it ?
In our first visit last year we were disturbed by the raging and untreated dental disease we found in the most beautiful of children in this lovely village in the foothills of the Rif Mountains. The children, from age six to twelve, were suffering tremendous decay rates on the back of a high sugar intake consistent with Moroccan tradition of diet. As well as sweet eating, the Moroccan mint tea and honey intake, coupled with poor to non existent oral hygiene and zero dental care are an explosive mix.
We found the youngsters to be carrying severe decay of their milk teeth and adult back teeth and of no surprise to the team, a frequency of dental abscess rare in Western children. Our sights had to be lowered to cope with this acute disease, mainly by extraction of diseased teeth and an attempt at restoration and decay control where possible.
Our first visit was an emotional strain, as pioneering dental visitors to the area we had the difficulty of carrying out dentistry in school classrooms, perhaps not ideal.
So to 2011 and this years visit .......
Backed by the enormous generosity of patients and friends of the Dental Mavericks and some dental companies, in excess of five thousand pounds of funding was put to good use.....
The first priority was equipment and the three field dental chairs we bought made a huge difference to the children's comfort . The photograph above shows the first of the chairs being handed over to a visiting Moroccan dentist for use in the village health facility. The kindness of Oliver's Dental Studio patients raised £500 to bring this chair to El Jebah.
As one of the dentists practicing in last years school class room let me tell you this was an enormous step forward. The second major improvement was the purchase of significant quantities of Western dental equipment including forceps and sterilisation products.
All of this added up to the pain free treatment of 160 children , non of which had seen a dentist since our visit last year.
The kindness of our suppliers and friends also allowed a move to dental education, with hundreds of toothbrushes and toothpaste distributed to the children, combined with some brilliant efforts from our support team, initiating tooth cleaning education where before there had been non.
The 2010 visit was only a start but left the dentists drained from the clinical restrictions they found .
2011 has been a huge success with many smiling faces, school children who had known pain now free of swelling and discomfort, having been treated in an environment we would be happy to treat our own children in.
The Mavericks finished off their visit with a breathtaking tour of Fes and the surrounding areas by road and included a two day trek of the Rif Mountains.
One thing is for sure , we will all be back to this wonderful part of the world next year to help move this to an even higher level.
Our aim is to include western restorative treatments and hygienist back up in 2012. Of 160 children seen, our dentists witnessed only one tooth filling in a child population ravaged by tooth decay. We aim to change things for the better !
Thanks for the memories Morocco
Special thanks for support on this trip must go to ..
Chris Wooley and the Henry Schein team for their effort and outstanding genorosity
Dentists Vera Tunn and Jas Sandhu for kind donation of supplies
Rob at Dentaid for excellent back up
and finally Graham Walker, Sara Terry, Sara Bonnetti and Aztec , thank you all so much.
The Dental Mavericks fund this project themselves with all donations going directly to the care of the Moroccan children. Michael Oliver Oct 2011 .
