New Mexico Dental Journal

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By Kenneth J. Armstrong, DDS, PhD
This July, I travelled to Uganda
with a team from Impact Nations
(impactnations.org ) providing
medical/dental care and distributing
mosquito nets and water filters to resi-
dents. We also built homes for widows
on recently purchased land.
There were 29 members on our team
from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Scot-
land, England, Ireland and Belgium. I
was the sole dentist and my wife was one
of our two physicians. The rest of our
team consisted of one accountant, one
nurse, one psychologist, teachers, care-
givers and businesspeople. We held four
clinics in villages around Mubende, our
base city. Our local contacts were village
pastors.
In earlier trips to Uganda, I performed
extractions, but in my last two trips
I concentrated on preventive care. I
applied fluoride varnish to each patient’s
teeth and, where there was decay, I first
applied silver nitrate. By using disposable
mirrors and applicators I treated close
to 400 patients. I brought 500 tooth-
brushes, and we gave one to each treated
patient and also one to each villager
waiting in line at the close of the clinic.
Every patient I saw needed treatment
from a hygienist. Some patients had
large amounts of calculus on their lower
anteriors. I wished I had an ultrasonic
scaler! There were almost no previous
restorations on any of the patients,
although a good number of them had
teeth extracted. We worked with transla-
tors and one of them had a few amalgam
fillings and another was having work
done on a root canal. About 30 percent
of the patients had no observable decay.
The rest of the patients had the usual
mix of some decay to rampant decay. We
dispensed acetaminophen or ibuprofen
to several patients and also antibiotics
where appropriate. We advised patients
with serious problems to go to the dental
clinic, although the clinics were some
distance away and quite expensive.
Getting to the villages was a challenge.
Crews in Uganda are building two-
lane highways to connect the country’s
major towns. When turning off these
paved roads to get to different areas of
the town or to a village, the connecting
roads are unpaved. Our team and
supplies traveled on two buses; our
bus drivers were amazing. The drivers
got our buses into areas that I thought
were impassible. When we arrived in a
village, scores of children would crowd
the buses; jumping up and down and
wanting to touch us. Some of our team
organized games and activities for the
children while we were there.
On days that we were not having
our clinic in a village, we distributed
mosquito nets to residents. We showed
each person who received a net how to
use it and, since entire families slept
under the net, the health benefit of each
net was multiplied. We distributed 1,000
nets which will protect almost 3,000 chil-
dren from malaria.
As some of us distributed mosquito nets,
others went through the village handing
out Sawyer water filters and two plastic
buckets for each filter. We showed the
villagers how to use the filters and how
to back flush the filter to clean it when
necessary. This simple technology can
provide thousands of gallons of clean
drinkable water. The water is even safer
to drink than bottled water.
Two of the major health issues in Uganda
are malaria and waterborne diseases.
Last year, we returned to a village where
we had distributed nets and water filters
on a previous trip. We found a greatly
reduced number of sick residents and
closed the clinic early. The local pastor
met his doctor in town and the doctor
commented that he had not seen him in
a while. The pastor said he was not sick
anymore because he was drinking clean
water and was even putting on some
needed weight!
We spent two weeks in Uganda. Our
hours at the clinic were long and after
closing we held evening meetings in the
village. Afterwards, the team was tired
but the work was very satisfying. Many
people who go on these journeys have
found them life changing and that has
been certainly true for me.
Note: Special thanks to
Dentsply for providing fluoride varnish
and Henry Schein for donating toothbrushes.
You can contact the Impact Nations U.S. office at 505-695-1433 | 877-736-0803,
or 4830 Pan American Fwy NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109.