|
India
The India Section, at their recent Convocation and Awards Ceremony, presented the Foundation Scholarship Award to Sandeep Pawade, II BDS, G.D.C., Aurangbad.
L-R, top row, PFA student scholarship recipient Sandeep Pawade, best student award for Bapuji Dental College (2002) recipient Dr. S. G. Jyothi, best student award for Maulana Azad Dental College (2003) recipient Dr. Ambica Kuthuria, and best student award of Bapuji Dental College (2000) Dr. Dinesh Singh Chauhan. Second row: PFA Section Secretary/Treasurer T. Samraj, Chief Guest Dr. B.P. Rajan, Section Chair Nilesh Gandhi, and Chief Editor V.P. Jalili
|
|
|
The Netherlands
Dr. J. R. Dam Backer, Secretary of Bridge the Gap Foundation, reported that their project, financially supported by the PFA Foundation, the ADI Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, and the ACD European Section, donated a new modern operation room to the hospital in Vietnam. Bridge the Gap Foundation is composed of seven professionals—two plastic surgeons, two maxillofacial surgeons, an anesthesiologist, and two dental surgeons—from the Academic Hospital University of Amsterdam. They regularly aid the Maxillofacial and Plastic Surgery Institute in Saigon responsible for treating patients in all of Vietnam. The Dutch professionals train and instruct their Vietnamese colleagues as well as operate on the many cleft palate patients in the country. Their expectations have turned out better than even they believed they would. The Dutch Team again visited Vietnam last January and inspected the new surgical operating room at the hospital.
This all started from a 2003 contract with the Dental School in Saigon to establish a dental follow-up program to treat the children. The Dutch Team wanted to form more than a “hit and run” circuit by introducing a complete, multidiscipline treatment scheme of surgical, restorative, orthodontic, speech training, etc, like in the western world.
|
|
The first pilot project of 56 children had some flaws in travel distances, fear of costs to the parents, and the misconception by the parents that since the lip was closed the problem was over. And cleft palates were not the only problems addressed. There were motor vehicle accident disfigurements, orthodontic and surgical problems, cranio-dysfunctional situations, macrognathic and micrognathic and cancer deformations. The Team spent a week in Saigon, then went to Laos.
Laos, a country as big as England, has 5 million very poor people with very little medical surgery facilities. The government has not handled these problems for their people. The cleft palate problem in Laos is as bad as it is in Vietnam. The resolute Dutch team wanted to begin assisting the need by starting right in at the Vientiane Mahosot Hospital. However, the bureaucracy of the situation resulted in stacks of paperwork and hours of translated negotiations before the Dutchmen were able to reach an agreement to start in 2005.
|
|
