Kampongcham dental outreach

For the past few days we have been in Kampongcham, a peaceful Cambodian province where we met the adorable Dr Nhep and her equally adorable husband.  Dr Nhep runs dental outreach clinics in rural villages about an hour car drive outside Kampongcham. I was surprised when she told me she normally runs these clinics single handedly, with only a few students to assist her (whom she teaches at the same time), working all day with no lunch break. AND she does it out of her own kind will, she doesn't get paid for it. What an amazing woman! I hope we have eased her work load during our visit. It has been an exciting contrast from the clinics in Phnom Penh.

Here we were working outside houses on stilts, and the heat was very noticeable even in the shade. The patient dental chairs were constructed from a plastic chair with a broom handle tied to the back of it, and a sponge on the broom for a headrest. The decon room was set up "round the back", with multiple washing up bowls and a pressure cooker.

Despite the very basic set up, we managed to do all the necessary treatment. Most patients arrived in pain and required either extractions or fillings. We had no drill, so fillings were limited to ART with GIC or IRM*. As soon as one patient left the chair, another one leaped into it, like children waiting for their turn at the swing park.

We rattled through about 55 patients on the first morning and had another non-stop session today. Dr Nhep seems very grateful for our help, continually thanking us for coming to help the Cambodian people. Taking team photos was a feat in itself - we must have stood with a dozen different combinations of people, whilst everyone took a photo on each camera (the Cambodian team were very "snap-happy").

Dr Nhep and her husband are very hospitable and have shown us the best places for lunch and dinner during our stay. (I'm just not too keen on chicken feet floating around in the soup, but hey what do I know?!) No, really we have been treated like kings and queens during our visit to Kampongcham.

So although it has been a fleeting visit, we are all very tired from the heavy work load and......interesting conditions (with the chairs so low down I adopted a 'lunge' type position for upper extractions - although today just gave in and knelt down to extract upper 6 roots.)

Tomorrow we are travelling to Siem Reap for the last part of our trip. It will be great going back there (the last time I went was two years ago - you can check out my other blog). But for this evening, we will be eating out with the lovely Dr Nhep and husband for the last time.

*ART - atraumatic restorative technique - partial removal of caries followed by restoration with GIC
GIC - glass iomomer cement
IRM - intermediate restorive material - a zinc oxide eugenol based material

Makeshift dental chair

Coconut water

Looking quizzically at todays lunch