A program with teeth

 

 

A Ssese Islander sits on a schoolroom bench in Kasekulo Village, Kalangala, Uganda, while a volunteer dentist extracts a tooth. Bottom: Ssese Islanders line up for treatment as Phyllis Kwesiga, president of the Kampala-Ssese Islands club, listens to their needs and sends them to the right place for either dental or medical assessment. Photos by Jessica Scranton

A woman lies stretched out in the grass. She has just had a decayed tooth extracted; its root was stuck in her gum, and the remains were chiseled from her mouth.

Earlier that day, she walked more than 3 miles to Kasekulo, a fishing village and one location where the Rotary Club of Kampala-Ssese Islands, Uganda, has established an ongoing traveling medical and dental clinic.

For more than 16 years, Ugandan Rotarians have taken hourlong ferry rides from Kampala to this community of islands. Since 200l, twice each year, members of the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA, have participated in the one-day clinics. Another once or twice a year, the Ugandans have visited the impoverished villages without the Americans. The U.S. Rotarians learned about the project while they were building water wells in northern Uganda eight years ago. Together, the Rotarians provide dental care, general health treatment, and deworming for islanders, many of whom have never left the island or their fishing villages.

A line begins to wrap around a school soon after the Rotarians arrive, transforming it into a clinic. Two volunteer physicians and two dentists attend to more than 300 patients. They often have so many patients that they work into the night and don’t leave until they attend to everyone there. Bainbridge Island club member John Walker remembers holding a flashlight into patients’ mouths so dentists could pull teeth. In 2003, the Kampala-Ssese Islands club built a permanent clinic on the main island of Kalangala.

With no other medical centers, villagers look forward to the visits, says Joy Bagyenda, a member of the club. The common health threats facing islanders often come from the parasites in Lake Victoria and the harsh presence of HIV/AIDS in small communities such as Kasekulo. In 2007, there were 54 documented cases of AIDS in this village. According to Bainbridge Island Rotarian Joanne Croghan, the women held a meeting to discuss the active cases of the disease and the many children orphaned by it. Uganda has an information campaign to recommend safer sexual practices, but this remote community does not receive the educational outreach.

Croghan has helped out by making cotton balls by hand and boiling the instruments in water heated by kerosene lamps. She has watched dentists yank and chisel hundreds of decayed teeth. Any patient who has a tooth extraction receives antibiotics. Every child receives antiparasitic medication. Swollen bellies, a typical sign of worm infestation, are commonplace here.

Rotarians help the islanders in other ways too. The Kampala-Ssese Islands club brought life vests for the villagers, who have a high incidence of drowning. Bainbridge Island Rotarian Pete Cholometes brought 50 pounds of toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, mosquito nets, soccer balls, pumps, and bouncing rubber balls to Kasekulo.

By the time the Rotarians leave the village, many people have large gaps in their smiles from the dental work, but the children, who bounce their new balls off the mud huts and the schoolhouse, are having too much fun to notice.