In October / November 2016 I will be making my 10th annual trip to Tanzania with my wife Una and a team of dentists and dental nurses. This year we are teaching in Northern Tanzania near Kilimanjaro. 

We self fund our trips however we have been frankly fairly rubbish at fundraising so I have updated this page and with a little more time at my disposal I am making a fresh appeal for funds and possibly some more volunteers for bridge 2 Aid!

We aim to truly make a difference by teaching local health workers to relieve dental pain mainly by teaching them how to perform dental extractions. Millions of people in the developing world live with dental pain with no hope of relief. This programme has ambitions for teaching beyond Tanzania as well as a social welfare programme in a village near Mwanza mainly inhabited by lepers and their families.

The training programme consists of training local health workers to diagnose dental conditions, administer local anaesthetic, extract teeth and provide post operative management, refer complicated cases, manage cross infection control and safe sterilisation, deliver basic oral health promotion and prevention, and advice on products that will help, and identify other oral problems (such as early signs of HIV, oral cancer, and poor oral hygiene).

Sustainability is at the heart of what we do. To us sustainability means putting the knowledge and the power to change their lives into the hands of the people who we are seeking to help. We want to be a catalyst for change, to set change in motion, but we don’t want to disempower the people in whose communities we are working. We are after all (well intentioned) guests in their country.

In developing their programmes Bridge 2 Aid is meticulous in looking at the existing healthcare networks and structures, as well as cultural mores. We want to ensure that the training we deliver is appropriate to the situation. Crucially when  volunteers leave an area the skills they have taught mean the work can be carried on, with the tools that we can leave with those we have trained. This is the B2Aid model comprises of teaching primarily extractions using hand instruments. The health workers we train usually are usually in remote rural areas with little or no electricity or running water. When our team leave we leave behind competent health workers now trained in emergency dental care who are able to get people out of pain and prevent dangerous infections. We’re leaving a long term legacy of ongoing pain relief.

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So please dig deep and donate now.