Humanitarian Projects

Humanitarian Project in Suqian, China 2007

In March of 2007, 23 of us from the U.S. went to China to perform some humanitarian dental work. We occupied six chairs of a clinic in the remote China town of Suqian (without a train station or an airport). The trip involved patient treatment (orphans, other poor children, old people from a nursing home, and cleft lip-palate kids), teaching local dentists more modern techniques, and going into schools to teach oral hygiene to students and teachers.

In four and one-half days of work, we were able to perform 650 dental procedures, give seminars (endodontics, crown and bridge, oral surgery, periodontics) to 50 dentists, teach about 1000 kids in school classrooms, and perform five cleft lip-palate surgeries. We took 12 dentists, two hygienists, a physician, an anesthetist, and some other support personnel (spouses, a translator, and one teenager). Several of the participants had served LDS missions in Mandarin-speaking areas and knew the language.

On some of the older people and even on an 11 year old girl, we found significant pathology and are working with local oral surgeons to provide follow-up treatment. Included with this information are pictures of a child who received surgery from the plastic surgeon that accompanied us. The orphanages have many children with these problems.

The surgeries cost Academy of LDS Dentists US$ 150 each -- a small price to pay for the procedure of their lifetime.

Everyone wants to go back again, including the plastic surgeon. In fact, he wanted to go back in six months for a week of treatment.  We are going to use what we learned on this trip to conduct more of them in the future.

Sincerely,    
Dr. Koerner