Hundreds benefit from dental health fair in Mandeville

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Hundreds of children and their parents benefited from free dental services during a back-to-school health fair dubbed 1000 Smiles, thanks to a partnership between overseas mission group Great Shape! The one-week fair, hosted at the Mandeville Baptist Church and supported by Golf View Hotel, Garden Hotel, Lial Global, QVC Financial Solutions, Allied Real Estate, Manchester Chamber of Commerce, and Ultimate Dining, attracted people from south-central Jamaica and as far north as Trelawny. Dr Harvey Arnce, a board member of Great Shape!

Inc, said 20 volunteers — including a mixed group of final-year dental students and retired doctors — participated in the mission. “I have been doing this with the team for 22 years across the Caribbean. I have been to most of the islands.

We also partnered with the Sandals Foundation,” he said in reference to missions, including a recently concluded health fair in St Ann. Students from five dental schools participated in the health fair in Mandeville. “The University of Western Ontario, Mid-Western University Illinois, Mid-Western University in Phoenix, University of the Pacific in San Francisco, and University of Southern California; the students typically come on these missions when they are not in school, so that is in August/September,” Dr Arnce told the Jamaica Observer last Friday.

Inc speaking with the Jamaica Observer in Mandeville on Friday. Kasey Williams Among the dental services offered were teeth filling, cleaning and extractions “We have to limit the volume of what we do on each patient, because 500 people who showed up for this week’s treatment and if we did a full mouth’s restoration, 400 [would] get to be seen. We are trying to just do a quadrant on each person,” said Dr Arnce.

He is encouraging Jamaicans to pay greater attention to their dental health. “The diet here has high carbs and people get tooth decay. They don’t have check-ups on a regular basis.

The decay gets bigger from inside the tooth and by the time it hurts, it is already too late for that tooth to be fixed and they end up with extractions. You almost have to be serviced on a yearly basis to fix a problem while it is in the early stages. “If not, you would require a root canal treatment or an expensive crown.