Akha Dental Clinic (Video)
By Paul Vernon on Aug 13, 2009 in Ministry Updates
At the end of this month (August 2009) our annual dental team will be arriving in Chiang Rai. Dr. Luce and Dr. Newman will be with the team to provide free dental care for the children’s home, Bible students, and various Akha villages. Dr. Luce has been coming out for years, and Dr. Newman joined him last year – spending some extra time with us in our village running a village clinic.
This year will be a whirlwind trip, just one week, but we are all looking forward to their visit. It’s incredibly late, but I’ve gotten a video up from last year’s village clinic.
The video is of a removal of an oral cyst (at least I think it was an oral cyst, Dr. Newman you can correct me in the comments if I’m wrong) from the lip of an Akha teenage girl. It’s a graphic, bloody video, so if you are one of our weak-stomached viewers, here’s a happier video for you.
Thanks for taking a look and posting a comment on my husbands blog (www.undertheacacias-blog.org.uk) I am a dentist and have been living and working in Scotland, doing lots of short term dental missions in the bush in Mozambique and Thailand refugee camps. Keith has been living and working in Burkina Faso for twenty years and we got married in June. I am looking at developing a dental service for the north of the country…a population of 200,000 with no dental provision with the Fulani and Songrai, muslim people groups that are largely unreached with the gospel. I’ll be working with the charity my husband set up called Acacia Partrnership Trust, and with World Horizons missions organisation. I’ll be training nurses in local hospitals to give dental health education and to do basic dental extractions, as well as starting up a mobile dental clinic. I’m looking for dental health education materials and a training programme for teaching locals to do bush dentistry and saw that you have developed such materials for use in Akha. If you can help me with any training materials please get in touch.
Also I used to go into Mae La refugee camp near Mae Sott and do dental clinics and trained a local to continue the work. He has left the camp now and as far as I am aware there is no dental provision for the refugees. Another mission in the east of Thailand who work with children also contacted me last year needing a dentist. Not sure if you guys are interested in travelling and doing dentistry or if your vision is for the area you are presently working in? Look forward to hearing from you.I’m encouraged looking at your website. The work you are doign and the witness is wonderful. God bless you guys!
Sincerely,
Lynne Smith