Sponsorship :: Cambodia Regional Training Centre
Kampong Cham Regional Training Center, Cambodia
The Project
This project seeks to provide twenty four basic sets of dental tools and instruments and portable chairs for graduating dental nurses who will be working in rural areas of Cambodia.
The Country
Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world and it relies heavily on aid. There are only 450 dentists and 330 dental nurses for a population of 15 million. The oral health record for Cambodia is poor but is finally now starting to be addressed.
The Dental Nurses Training School
This was established in 1992 as part of the government’s regional training centre for nurses. The dental nurse was introduced to meet the needs of the rural population who have little or no access to medical or dental services. The nurses provide basic medical and dental care to those people who would otherwise be unlikely to receive any treatment.
The Dental Nurse
The nurses are trained to provide extractions, scaling, anaesthetic and simple ART. This is basic oral health care that can be administered without highly technical equipment, outside of a traditional dental surgery. This is perfectly suited for taking into health centres in more rural communities which may not have electricity or running water.
In the past the basic equipment was provided at graduation. This enabled the nurses to set up a dental clinic within a health centre to provide basic medical and dental services from here. However budgetary restrictions have meant that recently the graduates have not received the instruments that they need to carry out this vital work.
This project has recently been sponsored by Dentist Neil Sikka of Barbican Dental Care. Neil is now involved with Dentaid in the development of the portable chair and is acting as an advisor during the design stage. He and Barbican Dental Care will be be sponsoring this Cambodian project and hope to support other Dentaid projects in the future.
Thank you to Neil and Barbican Dental Care for this valuable support.
