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.