Over 3,000 people living in districts of Wakiso and Luwero are set to receive free dental services courtesy of a health campaign organized by Tasaaga Organization and African Smiling Association (ARTs).
Speaking at the launch held at Tasaaga Primary School in Luwero district, Bruhan Mubiru, the Executive Director and Founder of Tasaaga Organisation, said that the campaign which started from his schools in Sitabaale village, in Busukuma sub county, will last for seven days in different communities of Luwero and Wakiso districts.
“We are here today (Saturday), on Monday we shall be in Kalungu, Tuesday in Kikyusa, Wednesday in Wakatayi, Thursday in Kibunyaye and conclude with Bandana in Wakiso district,” he said.
“As Tasaaga, we don’t have doctors but our strength is in mobilisation and in knowing our communities that are in need. So, the ARTs organization comes in with a professional team and renders services to the people we have mobilised. We do the mobilisation because we know the communities that need the services which are deep in villages,” he said.
Mubiru noted they are targeting close to 500 people per community, and believes that by the end of the week, at least 3,000 people will have received free dental care including; cleaning, extraction, and education.
Dr. Gunther Heyden, the President and Founder of ARTS, said people all over the world are facing extreme dental challenges.
“I have personally worked in East and West Africa. I have worked in Ghana, Togo, Senegal, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania and now Uganda. ARTS works mostly in Uganda and our major mission is to bring dental care and dental education to areas that do not have access to dental care. We want to take dental services to every household,” he said.
“We understand that we need to tackle this as a family. We are all working together to help people live a better life when it comes to living with dental pain. I am a dentist and I like to get people out of pain. Hopefully in future after the pandemic, this will work for us to continue bringing other organisations,” he added.
According to Dr Heyden, dental disease and cavities are the number one disease in the world,, noting that “it’s a bacterial disease that eats your teeth”.
“They are caused by not brushing your teeth and eating a lot of sugar like soda, juice etc. The number one way to not have cavities is to brush your teeth two times a day, flash your teeth and stay away from alot of sugar on your teeth.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Nkulumbi Becker, the co-founder ARTs, an NGO that aims at providing free dental services to the less privileged, noted that dental services in Uganda are extremely expensive and most of the time people opt for extraction because it’s cheaper.
“The increase is because people don’t know the right things to do to prevent this disease. Ideally, from the background, inside our mouth is not a sterile place so we have several bacterial in the mouth. Oce a child is born, they get several bacteria, when most of the people eat food and take long to brush, they tend to increase their chances of these micro-organisms in the mouth feeding on the food leading to the decay. Ideally, it would be very important that people brush in time whenever they finish eating food,” Nkulumbi advised.
He noted that food, bacteria and time are the three major factors that lead to tooth decay.
“So, once you take any factor away like if you brush in time, you will prevent dental decay. If you take away the food in the mouth through brushing, you will take away dental decay,” he said.
He said they are providing services from preventive to treatment like ensuring that there are toothbrushes and paste available for everyone that comes around.
“We have restorative materials like the cement here. We shall be doing what we call the atraumatic restorative treatment. That treatment is basically for teeth which are not paining. Those which are paining shall be extracted.”