Bridge2Aid

Oral diseases affect around 3.5 billion people worldwide, disproportionately impacting the most disadvantaged populations, typically in remote rural areas. The pain caused by oral disease can affect someone’s ability to eat and carry out every day tasks – such as working and attending school. Our aim is to share prevention messages and enhance the competence and confidence of the local dental workforce. This work is conducted in partnership with local dental associations, NGOs, and always with permission and by invitation from the Health Ministries. Our projects aim to reinforce the current healthcare structure and advocate for access to oral health education and treatment. Until 2020, we trained healthcare workers in rural areas to provide emergency dental treatment. We trained over 600 Clinical Officers, and provided free treatment to over 58,000 individuals. Since 2020, following discussions with Chief Dental Officers and key stakeholders, we now train and mentor Dental Therapists, deliver community-based oral health education and Infant Oral Mutilation awareness workshops. We have created and facilitated an online oral health training program for Dental Therapists in Malawi – extended to training community health educators to be rolled out nationwide. Our dental education programmes focus around 4 key areas: - Mentoring and up-skilling local Dental Therapists who serve remote and rural communities in low income countries. - Ending Infant Oral Mutilation. - Community Oral Health Promotion. - As well as our work in Africa we have begun working with UK universities to identify local area of need. We are then developing training programmes with dental students acting as community educators.