By Loyd Matare
A free dental outreach programme providing essential oral health services to underserved communities has entered its second phase in Hwange after treating more than 700 patients during its initial stop in Victoria Falls.
The initiative, which began on March 9, is being spearheaded by CIMAS Health Group in partnership with the SmileStar Foundation, bringing mobile dental services to communities with limited access to oral healthcare
Speaking during the outreach in Hwange, Dr Alan Guru, Head of Dental Clinics at CIMAS Health Group, said the team was encouraged by the response from communities.
“We are excited to be here in Hwange offering free dental services.
“We’ve been doing this for the last few days. We started in Victoria Falls where we attended to over 700 people over a period of three clinical days, which was much higher than what we did last year,” said Guru.
“So we are excited that we were able to get all these people out of pain, get them treated and we are looking forward to doing the same thing here at Miombo Safari Camp.”
He noted that tooth decay, particularly among children, was the most common condition encountered during the outreach.
“The main cases that we have seen were to do with dental care where you’ve got a lot of tooth decay particularly in young children,” Guru said.
“We’ve taken out a lot of teeth over the last few days…teeth that otherwise should have been saved.
“We’ve done a lot of fillings that we should otherwise not have needed to do if we had prevented this from the get-go.”
Founder of the SmileStar Foundation, Dr Mitesh Badiani, said partnerships had made it possible to reach hundreds of patients in a short period.
“This is our second visit to Zimbabwe as part of the SmileStar Foundation and our 38th outreach in total.
“The first three days we worked in Mokosana Hospital in Victoria Falls and we treated over 700 patients with a mixture of getting people out of pain and treating gum disease,” he said.
Badiani said the CIMAS mobile dental clinic had significantly enhanced the quality of care provided during the outreach.
“This is the only place that we actually have a mobile dental clinic that accompanies our team which enables us to provide a better service,” he said.
“There’s lots of people we see who don’t need extractions and the CIMAS team led by Alan Guru are able to provide restorative care. That’s an additional and better service than we are able to provide in any of the other 10 countries.”
Badiani warned that most of the dental problems being treated were preventable.
“The two biggest issues of oral health problems are dental decay, which is caused mainly by sugar, and gum disease caused by poor oral hygiene,” he said.
“The biggest message is prevention…cutting down sugar in every possible way and improving brushing habits.”
