Education: Parents and School

Too often parents will bring a child to MOST with hope of a cleft lip or palate surgery only to be disappointed when the procedure is denied because it cannot be preformed safely due to massive decay of existing teeth and resulting infection. Instead, many of the baby teeth are extracted, the mouth will heal and the child will need to return for our next mission, waiting another year for the hope of the surgery. Team dentist, Bill Gates and team pediatrician, Pete Wallace stress that preventative dental care is what is needed. They note the lack of preventative care is a great problem in the United States, but even much worse in Guatemala.

Educating the Guatemalan parents is a preventative treatment that is no cost to the families. An appreciation for the value in caring for teeth, even baby teeth would be a major step in a no cost treatment. Helping parents understand what sugar does to teeth would be significant. Dr. Gates has repeatedly seen mothers adding sugar to their baby’s water bottle. He states that such a practice is just not appropriate for the health of the child. The general acceptance of candy and sodas as food and drink also contributes to tooth decay. While the education of parents is no cost to the families, in Guatemala as in the rest of the world, there is a higher cost for healthy practices. That includes the next level of prevention, purchasing toothbrushes and toothpaste, which is an added expense for many of the families in the area who are living at extreme poverty. A third level of preventative dental care would be fluoride treatments.

MOST is about safe cleft lip and palate surgery for those who do not have access to the procedures, however, it is difficult to always separate the surgery from the overall general health of the child, including dental care. Rotarians, dental care professionals and local Guatemalan dentists are looking at ways to start to address these levels of preventive care. Three Rotarians traveled to a school of about 150 elementary students and gave the children coloring booklets about teeth brushing. The students learned a song about brushing their teeth, which they repeatedly sang for the visitors. All students received a toothbrush and paste.

The Rotarians delivered to the teachers of the school flipbooks on dental care that were developed by Dr. Karen Weber-Gasparoni of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Iowa. The flipbooks are printed in Spanish with color photos that illustrate brushing techniques and general care of teeth at many ages.

A wonderful part of dental education efforts is the local Guatemalan dentists making plans to go to the schools and teach children about dental care. All of these efforts are ways to enhance MOST.