Nepal and India have finished their first dental outreach projects! The teams in Bandipur, Nepal and Amboori, India have been working non-stop for two weeks to try and screen and treat as many people as they can for free. The stats are pretty impressive….

Nepal screened 1047 people, referred 815 and treated 977.  As Nepal was something of an unknown – the schools being closed for the summer – we had no idea whether people would respond to the posters and flyers we placed around the area. In the end, hundreds of people turned up and the team had to close off general screenings from Wednesday onwards so that they could treat all the people who had been referred from earlier days in the project.  The treatment figure ended up higher than the referrals because people were still turning up in severe pain and our kind hearted students felt it better to work through lunchbreaks to screen and treat at the same time.

India had less students than Nepal, but despite working in a new area we knew the schools were open and who would be able to come to the programme, which gave us a better idea of how people would respond. What you never know with India is how bad each area’s teeth are – Kerala has some of the worst oral hygeine in the country and last year saw almost 80% of those screened needing treatment. In the end, the team screened 900 people, referred 513 and treated 343, showing that 57% of the people turned up had problematic teeth. This implies that teeth in the Western Ghats are generally better than the teeth in the coastal towns from last year! 

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