There are many charities which provide the incredibly valuable service of ‘dental pain clinics’ but no real provision for the restoration of the dentition thereafter. This can leave patients with large gaps where teeth have been extracted meaning that they can quite often struggle to eat and chew their food well, to speak properly and to look and feel normal.

I feel very passionately that this should not continue and intend, along with the trustees of Den-Tech, to set up a high quality, supported working and training dental laboratory in the Uganda to help provide not only a little help now but a legacy of support and training that could be a leg up to the native people and not just a temporary hand out.

This drive and enthusiasm to help has now extended to helping out those less fortunate in the UK, the homeless. This new project is in addition to the existing overseas ones and has received a fantastic amount of support from the dental technician community who are pulling together to provide a full range of dental technology services free to those most vulnerable and needy in our society.

We need to raise funds to transport donated equipment and supplies over to Uganda and Cambodia but also to fund the setting up of a portable laboratory here in the UK that can provide an onsite facility for basic dentures and repairs for our homeless.