Mobile Prison visit to Banteay Meanchey Province

From July 5^th to  9^th  2010, the One-2-One CAMBODIA Team in partnership with Prison Fellowship of Cambodia and the Denmark Dental Health Without Borders, spent one week at the prison in Banteay Meanchey Province providing dental and basic health care to the prisoners and prison staff.

A tremendous effort was made by every member of the team to make the most of each day there, seizing this wonderful opportunity that had been given to them.

The One-2-One Team had 15 Khmer students. Seven dental chairs, two portable dental units and 6 lights were set up. Helena Duff represented our Medical Team.

Each work day started at 7.30am setting up equipment, materials and organising prisoners to be seen and treated.

The oral health status of the prisoners was very poor with many decayed teeth and very poor oral hygiene. Dr John Christensen performed a triage of the patients, to help prioritise urgent cases.

We strived to maintain a high standard of cross infection control. Oral hygiene instruction was given to the patients along with a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, as a lot of the prisoners had not routinely performed tooth brushing and there was a high incidence of smoking, and some prisoners with HIV.

In total the dental team treated 280 patients. There were 255 male prisoners and 25 female prisoners who received treatment out of the entire prison population. We provided 292 extractions, 49 fillings, 25 scalings and 400 toothpaste and toothbrushes.

In total the medical team treated 810 patients over the 4 days. 750 were men and 60 women.  We also offered de-worming tablets to the entire prisoner population (which was far more than 810) and provided the tablets to each prisoner who wanted it.

We wish to thank Prison Fellowship Cambodia for their financial and logistic support, Denmark Dental Health without Borders as well as the English, Irish, New Zealand and Khmer volunteers who gave of their time so generously.

Medical team in actions

With huge help and funding for the medical team from the sponsors in Singapore, the One-2-One CAMBODIA is able to purchase the various medical equipments.

It is wonderful and most encouraging for the team.

As a result we have held training workshops to ensure that every one knows HOW to use and maintain the equipments correctly.

You can see Kosal and also Sreynin , Sophear and Hor in the volunteering work.

Thank you again Singapore team for making the medical clinic possible with your generous donation of the equipments.



Actions in SMILe Project

You can see the One-2-One team lead by Dr Callum explaining and discussing what we hope to do, listening to them to understand what their needs are and how we can best achieve the desired outcome.

Then we set out to have a look at what the dental situation is like and make some friends .... show the Mum's and the children that dentists can be friends as well...

For many foreigners who were present, this is a first so it was important for them to see the MOBILE chairs and what the examination and treatment activity would look like when we come back with a larger service delivery team. This created a real buzz in the community.

They are excited about the training and the integrated way that we plan to help them and work with them. Their faces beamed when we told them that we would run training courses on how to keep healthy. It was a very happy day for all concerned.

We will be back in October for a needs assessment trip and focus group interviews to better understand what the dental and medical needs are, what the pattern of feeding is for the preschoolers so that we can better educate the mothers and the health care volunteers.  This will be a week long visit. During this time our staff will live in the village and be part of the happenings.

In November then we will be back with training sessions and December our service team will commence work with the assistance of the village mum's, health care volunteers and community leaders we trained to work along side with us. So watch this space ...

Thank you for journeying with us. Together that which is impossible for each individually becomes possible. This is a reality that we all dreamt and hoped for. Partnership participation and protection for the sake of the children of Cambodia.

Introducing SMILe Project in Kampong Spue

Kampong Spue is the first community for the Cambodia Camkids SMILe project. We believe that this is a first for Cambodia. This is a collaboration between One-2-One CAMBODIA and Camkids.  Camkids and One-2-One make history together AGAIN !!!!

The area is about 1 1/2 hours from Phnom Penh and the drive there passes through beautiful scenery which belies the hardship of the people in this community.

The nearest Government health clinic is 25 KM away and with no public transport. The only  motor vehicle available belongs to the village chief. All the villagers we spoke to had never been out of their community. Phnom Penh is another world to them ...

KAD (Khmer association for development) has been working in this community, They brought the attention of the plight of the poor to our attention, (the lack of dental medical care, the geographical isolation). With funding from Camkids and One-2-One's manpower this project came into being.

3 prong approach - provision of desperately needed dental relief of pain with medical treatment and prevention measures as well as training of the village stakeholders so that they can better look after them selves.

This trip was to gauge community interest and to meet with the Cambodian stakeholders of this community i.e, the village chiefs and the local village health care volunteer as well as villagers. We explained to them what we plan to do and how we hope to involve them in the planning of service delivery.

Transporting teams in serving the communities

Taking children from orphanages to receive dental treatment and check up.

One-2-One van has been working over time transporting our team to prison, slums, orphanages . We are so grateful for it. Thanks to Dr Barry from Australia for his kind donation.

Here is Makara with our One-2-One Tuk Tuk which has been so generously donated by our Singapore donors. Th tuk tuk is worked  equally hard and used for smaller groups to maximize efficiency of our resources.

Welcoming Khairos Dad - John

We welcomed John (husband of Helena ) who will be Khairos Dad and One-2-One life skills coach.  

You can see him settling in really well with our lads.

Khairos Mum – Helena.