Wisdomtooth

The Lamdon School Clinic received a very pleasant surprise a few days ago. A group of 30 students lead by Tom Brodie and Enid Fookes from Shagerak International School of Norway, arrived with the culmination of a year’s worth of effort gathering supplies for the clinic. Among the donations were 5000 toothbrushes and toothpaste to be distributed to the students at both the main Lamdon campus and satellite schools. They collected much needed disposable supplies such as gauze, gloves, and masks. In addition, they were able to acquire more advanced supplies and instruments such as: curing lights, capsule mixers, amalgam and composite filling material that will be utilized when dental teams come. Oh, and let’s not fail to mention the $12,000 they collected for the ongoing long term dental project at Lamdon. All of us involved with the project give our deepest gratitude for your generosity, hard work, and compassion. Thank you very much, and we hope that you enjoy your time in Ladakh.

We’ve been in Leh, at Lamdon School for a little over a week training Yangchen Dolma, the school nurse. She has made remarkable progress in such a very short time. Great thanks to Bill Kite for the many things he has done to make Yangchen’s training possible. He is the driving force behind the entire Lamdon School Dental Project. We are honored that he has asked us to be a part of it, and commend his vision and commitment to creating a sustainable, permanent, oral health presence on campus.  One of the things that he did that has allowed us to make such rapid progress was to print our training manual in advance of our arrival. Yangchen studied well. Her preparation has allowed us to quickly begin applying dental concepts to real clinical situations.  We have already moved through all of the key skill sets, and given her an opportunity to work with real patients in these areas. She is showing excellent progress in identifying decay, calculus (tartar), infections of the pulp, and dental abscesses. She has had an opportunity to place fillings (ART), clean teeth (subgingival debridement), and perform extractions. We will continue reinforcing her diagnostic and hand skills, giving her as much opportunity as possible to gain experience in advance of the team of 15 dentists from the Singapore Dental Society who will be coming in early July to provide much needed advanced dental treatment. They will be working hard to wade through the huge backlog of disease that has resulted from many years of extremely limited access to dental care. We look forward to their arrival. They had better hurry up though, as Yangchen’s fervor to learn just might come close to putting a dent in the 1200 outstanding cases here.  Finally, we would like to thank Mountain Air Gear of Wenatchee for donating two high quality, Petzl headlamps. They have been indispensable, allowing us to see clearly in a situation with less than ideal lighting.

We have completed the first edition of a training manual to be used by dental health workers and volunteers.  Intended to guide learning, and be used as a review reference, it is extremely focussed and concise with many visual aids.  Is has been reviewed by dentists with Rotary and East Meets West foundation, and received encouraging support.  The board will discuss at its May 11th meeting how to best make it available. For now, if you are interested in a copy of it, just email us, and we will happily send you a copy.  Otherwise, check back later in May, and it may be available for download directly from our site.  Also, keep in mind that since it is an electronic document, revisions and improvements will come frequently.  So periodically return to see if a new edition has been made available. 

Great News!  We received a tasty little treat last Halloween.  Wisdomtooth received it's letter from the IRS that it is officially recognized at a tax exempt charity.  The effective date was October 31st, 2007.  This means more for donors than us.  People can donate to us, and write off the donation against their income.  What a nice little perk.  For now, in case anyone wishes to double check this information, it is filed under "International Oral Health Resource" which was our former name prior to an epiphany, and stroke of luck nabbing the Wisdomtooth.org domain.  Yes, we like the new name better as well.  So, thanks for keeping tabs on us, and we hope to give you more great news of new projects and successes as they come. 

Thank you for exploring our site.  We hope to give you many interesting and inspirational entries as our group develops and grows.  Currently, we are working on setting a strong foundation for volunteers, health workers, and remote clinics to come to for resources.  Concurrently with setting up the website, we are developing a training manual for health workers and volunteer instructors to use as a simple guide.  We are working to have a polished English version available by the end of January.  So check back in a few weeks to hold me to that self imposed deadline.  Cheers.