Become a real Tooth Fairy! The first mobile dental clinic at Kokchan School, in rural Cambodia, will treat 510 children. Cambodian dentists and dental nurses with assistance from California Student Dental Mission volunteers will provide exams, extractions, fillings, sealants and fluoride treatment. Oral hygiene lessons, toothbrushes, and follow up will be provided. These rural children have never seen a dentist and many suffer from pain, making it difficult to eat, sleep and learn.
There are no dental services in the villages and rural communities. With poor nutrition and lack of clean water, soap or toothbrushes, the children are suffering from rampant tooth decay. This starts at an early age and affects both baby and permanent teeth. This impairs their ability to eat, be better nourished and be able to study on a full stomach.
Our project of bringing dental hygiene with regular tooth brushing to the classroom can alleviate some of the problems. Each child is taught how to properly brush their teeth is given a toothbrush, kept in special holders in the classroom. The first step in oral hygiene is an annual mobile dental clinic which extracts, fills and protects teeth with sealant and fluoride.
The project offers a follow up with monitored regular tooth brushing and banning of candy and soda from the campus. This is equally important as the extracted teeth in our dental missions. We feel that the children will be able to bring the effect of oral hygiene home to their family and siblings. The family will have the opportunity to be better nourished without having most of their teeth extracted.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
