Dental Camp, August 9th

Today we held our first dental camp at the Ramavaram community. The event began at 12PM and lasted till approximately 2:00PM.

The event went very well. In the morning, I (Sriram) went to the Community Dentistry department to meet the professors and finalize some last details. Ritin, Nivedita, Tushar, Veena, and Deepthi went to the camp early to help set up the tent and to do some preliminary setup. Lalita met the new recruits at the bus-stand.

There were many things going on in the morning but it all came together nicely. I went with the dentists to the camp, while the others had set up the camp. We had to do some rearrangements but the camp began on time. About 50-60 patients were seen today, of all ages. After registration, they went in for a dental screening, managed by a number of interns from the department. If treatment was required, the patients went in for treatment.

A variety of conditions were treated. While a few patients had the happy diagnosis of "Good Oral Hygiene," most of the cases required scraping or restoration. Many children required followup for more complex restoration work or for tooth extractions that could not be performed at the camp site.

People of all ages were treated, and after their treatment finished, each patient was given a toothbrush. One tooth-powder was given per house. Aslesha, Benedicta and Nivedita gave lectures in toothbrushing and in maintenance in good oral hygiene to each of the patients. As the patients were leaving, Lalita and Rifa wrote down the cases and documented those that required follow-up.

This event took a lot of work from everybody involved and it was exciting to see so many new faces. From the MBBS III batch, we had Yogesh, Shivam, Raghavendran, Srikanth on board, who did a great job of managing the crowd. From the MBBS II 'Zephyrs' batch, we had Sandesh, who was a great help with the patients. Newcomers from the MBBS II 'Warriors' batch included Safwan, Tattagath, Aadhar, and Sindhura who did a variety of work. In addition I would like to thank Bharathi, from Dallas, Texas, for taking some time out of her day to help us.

We would sincerely like to thank the Department of Community Dentistry for making this camp a reality. They took time out of their busy schedules to come to visit these children. The Department runs a lot of dental camps to underprivileged areas and they were very kind to add our own place to their list. I would especially like to thank the HOD, Dr. Shivakumar, as well as one of his Assistant Professors, Dr. Mahendravel for coming to treat the cases. In addition, the many interns and BDS III students did a great job of screening the cases.

Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Prem for getting us the permission to use the area on their property. Without their help, this camp could not have happened either.

Click here to view photos from this event