In February 2013 three members of staff from Bathampton Dental Practice (Carl Fullaway, Paul Wilson and Leila Beaumont) are travelling to Tanzania with a charity called Bridge2Aid. They will be there for 2 weeks and will be training local health workers to provide safe emergency dental care. Dental care is mostly non-existant in rural Tanzania, and many people suffer ongoing severe dental pain because they can't get access to services, or attempt to self-treat, with dangerous consequences. The great thing about Bridge2Aid is it trains local people to provide safe and effective treatment to those who need it most, leaving a lasting legacy, which is much better than anything we could achieve working for a couple weeks.

Here is a bit more information from their website:

The Dental Volunteer Programme is in Mwanza, Tanzania and it is a 2 week trip in order to not only help provide emergency treatment for those that do not have access to dental facilities, but also to teach local Clinical Officers how to continue providing treatment for locals in rural areas. Each placement on the trip will cost us £1750 which sounds a lot but will make a huge difference to peoples lives in Tanzania.

 

In the UK:               1 dentist to every 2,100 people. In Tanzania:           1 dentist to every 300,000 people!

Most of the population in rural areas have to walk more than 40miles by foot to get to their nearest dentist. More than 24 million people do not have access to dental treatment and most will simply suffer or resort to self treatment, with horrific consequences and pain.

Bridge2Aid are working at grass roots level in the heart of Mwanza, a city in the north of Tanzania, providing effective dental care and treatment to all the local communities. Working alongside the Tanzanian government, we are addressing the urgent issues of:

Lack of treatment in rural areas
Most trained personnel are in cities but up to 90% of the population live in rural areas.

Providing education
Many get seriously ill or even die after attempting to extract teeth themselves.

Equal access for all
Hope Dental Centre, set up and run by B2A, serves all members of the local community regardless of race or wealth.

For Bridge2Aid to continue to provide dental facilities and train local Clinical Officers they need donations. Money raised will go towards providing equipment and materials needed to treat those in rural areas, as well as neccesary training. The Volunteer Programme now runs four times a year plus.

In the 5 years since the programme began, B2A have trained and equipped over 120 local people (Clinical Officers) in the region, providing access to emergency dentistry to a population of over 1,200,000 people.

We aim to make a big difference to the lives of the people of Mwanza; a little goes a long way. For example, JUST £5 will pay for emergency dental care, treatment and medicine for a member of the street community.

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To help raise money staff from Bathampton Dental Practice participated in a sponsored 8km round walk through Bath on Friday 26th October in order to raise money for Bridge2aid. They started from Bathampton surgery in the afternoon at 2pm and walked along the Warminster Road, through the centre of town, back along the London Road then over the toll Bridge back to where they started. This walk was roughly 8km and took them a good couple hours to do.

As a practice they aim to join Bridge2aid and become unity partners and support a clinical officer out in Tanzania, this costs £2500 to set up and £250 each year to keep finically supporting clinical health worker. They think this would be a wonderful thing to do as not only will be helping for 2 weeks while their out in Tanzania, but they can carry on helping by paying for the costs of the education and equiptment the CO needs out in Africa to perform adequate emergency dentistry.

Please donate if you can it is for a fantastic charity!

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