One Laptop Per Child
January 26, 2024The Breakfast Program
January 27, 2024Dental Clinic
We have established fully equipped dental clinics in several locations of the Munecas and Aroma Provinces in the Bolivian Andes. We are currently serving a population of over 25,000 people who have never had access to proper dental care.
Our clinics, staffed with highly trained professionals and state of the art equipment, treat hundreds of patients per month. The Dental Program provides dental care services year-round in several villages. It is the only service providing direct dental care for children in these areas. In addition to direct dental care focusing on children we also provide emergency services for adult patients; the program provides education on dental hygiene for all of the children in the local schools.
A Day in Life of a Dentist in Bolivia
In two occasions, Dr. Dan MacLellan, a dentist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, travelled to Bolivia to work as a volunteer with the IMIF dental program, with two major objectives. The first was to help the local dentists treat patients. Copious soft drink ingestion combined with lack of regular dental hygiene and dental care means that many people, especially children, have extensive dental caries. Because the people seldom seek treatment until they experience pain, extraction and the premature loss of teeth are often the result. IMIF dentists, however, have been working with people to prevent caries and preserve teeth. The second objective was to help improve and develop the IMIF dental program. This involved sharing current procedural techniques and treatment philosophies from Canada in an effort to increase preventative procedures and increase the local standards of care, especially in the more remote locations.