Education Bolivia Project #7925

Help Dental Hygiene Students Make Bolivia Smile!

by Smiles Forever

Project Report | Mar 4, 2019
Wishing to Seal the Deal with "Miracle" Sealant

By Sandy Kemper | Foundation Executive Director & Consultant

Welcome to 2019 where in Bolivia Smiles Forever is Fighting to Save Teeth adding GIC Sealant!

You have seen our many updates where we have utilized SDF, a compound which applied directly to teeth arrests the decay. This process has been so critical in avoiding painful extractions in children by stopping the spread of tooth decay. In the schoolchildren of Villa Tunari located in a humid jungle zone of Bolivia, Smiles Forever has been conducting a three-year study which will time out this April. Hundreds of children and their thousands of teeth have benefited. Decay for the most part was stopped, and the tooth remained as a space-saver until a permanent one grew in.

What Smiles Forever would like to do with your help and help from a specialized grant is to continue this outstanding work for another three years. What would be different is to upgrade the treatment of children where so much of the tooth has already decayed with a special GIC sealant. This would be a special filling compound or in dental circles what is now being called a "miracle" sealant.

According to world protocols, our patients would be seen at six-month intervals and all data meticulously recorded. Already Smiles Forever has invaluable data to share. The longterm project has yielded so much knowledge in this largely stable population. Over 70% have been in the study or seen before within the 3-year timeframe. An opportunity to extend our ground-breaking SDF work with the addition of GIC fillings would be extremely valuable. Even non-professionals can appreciate the happiness our treatments have brought to hundreds of children and their families.

This is a rare situation in predominently indigenous peoples of Bolivia who largely lack dental care. Can you believe that with the help of our U.S. Toothfairies we have supplied 2,000 toothbrushes already and hope to distribute 2,000 more. Children think toothbrushing is fun and participate willingly in our hygienist provided education sessions. Charts are made to encourage both home and school brushing habits. Everyone is proud of their toothbrush, such a simple tool to maintaining good overall health.

Thank you sincerely as you wish with us for a successful year. Sandy (pictured with other World of Children winners), The World of Children 2018 Awards Ceremony & Benefit was an incredible night! On Thursday, November 1 in New York City, Sandy Kemper and five others were honored for dedicating their lives to changing the future for vulnerable children.

Attachments:

One of our outstanding toothfairies (DOCX)

1 Attachment

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Dec 5, 2018
Holiday Cheer Coming to Brave Bolivian Children

By Alejandro Beckwich | Smiles Forever Director

Smiles Forever Continues the Tradition of a Holiday Party for Burned Children

Smiles Forever Foundation staff have been working with Mosoj Punchay Foundation (burned kids in rehabilitation and recently

out of the hospital), for 8 years now and doing the Christmas party

at the hospital for the last 4.

We cannot work directly with the hospital due to the medical

circunstances, but we established the toothbrusing program and work with

the kids once they leave the hospital.

The year Sandy's father gave Wilson a laptop to help him communicate after he lost his arms from an electrical burn.

Traditional Holiday Party with Santa

Doing the Cristmas party comes from our hearts. Since all these kids

have a special place in our hearts, all the staff collaborates.

This year we voted that instead of using our Smiles Forever provided funds for

our Christmas activity or dinner, we instead will use those funds to buy toys

for the kids in the hospital. As usual, I will dress as Santa. This is a roll I look forward to and it gives me much satisfaction to spread joy. I am so proud of our generous staff who will donate some of their Christmas bonuses to purchase meals

for the kids.

This year is going to be a different one since it is the first one without

Martita doing most of the shopping and preparing natural juices for

the kids ........we all miss such a special lady who passed away. She had been with Smiles Forever from the beginning as a housemother and is not forgotten. Martita personified the spirit of giving.

Preparations Continue with Smiles Forever Staff donating bonuses for meals & toys

The actual party for the recovering burned children who need encouragement and acitivities will be on December 15th. Remember we are in the southern hemisphere, so now it is our warmer season. Allow me to share photos from prior years with these brave a precious children.

Happy Holidays to all our wonderful donors from myself and the staff here in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Sharing the Joy of the Giving Season,

Sincerely,

Alejandro, devoted Smiles Forever Clinic Director

Here I am pictured out of my Santa outfit last year/ and on an outing with my young family.

Note from Smiles Forever Founder Sandy Kemper

Personally, I add how lucky our organization has been to have Alejandro come to us at the beginning and mature with us as our vision for helping bring dental care to Bolivia developed. Alejandro brings so many talents to us and I have seen myself how he instills hope and promise to those around him. I might add he is a wonderful jolly Santa!

Alejandro and I have already been planning how we can bring Smiles Forever into 2019, getting a head start on plans to enhance the clinic practices and outreach. We like new ideas, so if you, our treasured donors, have an idea to broaden our social media status and strengthen our "brand," please share. We will be listening. It took all of us to bring us to the level of World of Children prize winners for health in 2018. Feel free to see pictures and more about our story on the World of Children site.

Heartfelt thanks, Sandy

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Sep 10, 2018
Bolivia Welcomes Shoreline CC Hygienist Students

By Nancy Clark | Project Leader

Tooth Fairy Adela with Kellie

Smiles Forever Bolivia welcomes Shoreline, Washington community college dental hygienist students:

This longterm early fall 3rd-World opportunity for students entering the 2nd year of dental training has been a great success over the years. It is something students and sponsoring SCC and accompanying dental instructor look forward to from day one. The rewards are so great as enthusiasm fuels learning both in Bolivia and back home. Many students come away with inspiration to last a lifetime.

Lucky Shoreline Students take part in UPAL first ever joint demonstration:

This group of aspiring dental hygienists will have so much to remember! They are part of the history-making cooperation between Smiles Forever's dental training in Bolivia and the university level program in what we would call a technial community college. Sharon Golightly who has been instrumental in writing curriculm for Smiles Forever, demonstrates scaling procedure.

The rest of the tooth fairy story:

For those of you who have been following along with prior stories, Kellie had traveled to Bolivia last spring as a tooth fairy ambassador. She is currently one of our newest and most active Smiles Forever Board members. This past month, she helped with music & dance planning for what promises to be our most fun auction coming Oct. 20th--Noche del Gaucho. Our donors are encouraged to wear boots & pampas-inspired neck scarves. Therefore, Kellie will not be wearing her usual princess dress and tooth fairy tiara.

The Tooth Fairy in Bolivia...continued:

My time with Smiles in the Chapare further convinced me that silver diamine fluoride works. While working at the school, Dr. Steven Duffin shared with us the history of SDF, research related to its use, and his clinical experience with it. Dr. Duffin’s mentoring was invaluable. I use SDF in my independent senior focused practice so I have seen for myself how this antibiotic liquid turns soft, active decay into hard, arrested lesions. However, my senior patients are at the end of their lives, so I rarely get to monitor these areas for more than a year. This is where Smiles Forever helped me to see the longer term effects of the application of SDF on a carious lesion.
Smiles has been providing assessments and SDF with fluoride varnish every six months for the last 18 months at the time I was there. Chart after chart showed rampant, active decay written in red pencil at initial visits. These areas were treated with SDF and fluoride varnish. Six and 12 months later, these areas were charted in blue pencil as hard, arrested lesions. If this wasn’t amazing enough to witness documented over and over again, there were very few new active areas of decay noted in the hundreds of children we saw. How is it that there was almost no new decay in a population where sugary snacks and soda pop are less expensive than bottled water and there has been very little dietary or oral hygiene behavior modification efforts? If I hadn’t seen the rampant amount of caries in a state of arrest for myself, I would have thought the data to be exaggerated. I will never forget how such a small drop of an inexpensive liquid made such a massive positive impact. And without local anesthetic, a drill, or sedation, I might add.
I have mentioned that registered dental hygienists are prevention specialists. Our training has also made us critical thinking experts. I have seen first-hand the epidemic of early childhood caries, in the jungle of Bolivia and in my own and neighboring counties. For the children who suffer from its pain, days missed in school, and for some, death, I am left with the uncomfortable question to ask: are we doing our job well enough? There is no better time than the present to return to our roots of caries prevention, especially while having SDF at our fingertips. The Smiles Forever community outreach program is an excellent model of how caries can be arrested in oral health related programs, right here where we live.
The Tooth Fairies aim to do just that. Even prior to my own experience with Smiles Forever, Elise had inquired about implementing SDF applications within our ECEAP sites. Although we have been met with firm opposition, we will continue to advocate for its use in our school based program. In the meantime, I created an informational brochure about SDF for the families of the children we serve. By bringing awareness to this treatment option, our hope is that parents will begin to ask their dentists for it. We have also compiled a list of dental offices in our region that offer SDF as a treatment option and we provide this resource to all of the student’s families we see.
This last Fall, dressed as a Tooth Fairy in a local ECEAP site, I saw my first official baby tooth that had been treated with silver diamine fluoride. There have been a handful of other children that have been treated with SDF to follow, and I anticipate seeing more with each classroom visit. I view these small beginnings as a tell-tale sign that dentistry is changing, and I am once again humbled to not only witness it, but be a part of it.

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Bolivian girl treated at Bolivian University

Dr. Duffin teaching moment with Bolivian youth

Speaker at Bolivian Univ. ceremony with S. Kemper

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