Hard work, heartbreaking, heartwarming and full of hilarious moments thanks to a great bunch of new found friends… going to Cambodia in March 2025 was an experience I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
Our first week was spent creating a pop-up dental clinic (complete with decontamination, thanks to the lovely local dental nurse who ran that for us) in a community hall out in the provinces. We were assisted by local dental students who came to learn and translate, and the constant stream of adults and children who patiently queued up to be seen, often for the first time ever, was humbling.
Our second week was spent visiting four schools in the province of Sam Laut, 60km ish from the Thai border. This was crazy busy! Dental nursing for two dentists at the same time as the children lay on a desk on each side, but it meant we got to see an average of 137 children per day. All lovely, grateful and some with new smiles.
Over the two weeks we saw 659 people, 517 of which were children, and carried out 1,742 treatments. A real mix of extractions, fillings where we could, and preventative measures such as fluoride, sealants, SDF applications to help arrest caries and scales of heavy calculus.
Oral health instruction was given out along with the toothbrushes and toothpastes we took out there – my case contained over 10kg of Sensodyne and Corsodyl toothpastes as well as bags of Curaprox toothbrushes kindly donated by our representatives.
Oh, and of course my little pot of Marmite (rice three times a day sometimes needed spicing up!).
But it wasn’t all hard work, on the odd days off in between we got to explore a bit of Phnom Penh, go on the bamboo train in Battambang and visit Angkor Wat, as well as visiting a deprived area of the capital with a charity partner and serving food for 100 children – gorgeous and still smiling….
For anyone thinking of applying for one of these trips, I would urge you to just do it! The leaders are so supportive and knowledgeable, you will have experiences you will never forget and forge some incredible friendships.
