DMD 16 Students Provide Dental Care to Rural Hondurans

For five days in October 2015, Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) DMD 16 students Jennifer Ng and William Nguyen were in San Marcos, a town in rural Honduras, with a team of dental and medical professionals, providing oral health care to members of the local population.

Ng and Nguyen’s externship to San Marcos was coordinated by GSDM’s Office of Global and Population Health (GPH), which helps facilitate multiple externship service missions for fourth-year dental students each year to people in need of care in other countries.

In the 2015-2016 school year, more than 40 students have gone—or are scheduled to go—on externship mission trips. The round-trip airfare for all these externship mission trips is generously paid for by the GSDM DMD Alumni Fund.

Ng and Nguyen were partnered with the Massachusetts-based organization, Cape CARES, which provides medical and dental care to Hondurans who lack access to care. GSDM students have partnered with Cape CARES in Honduras several times before.

Cape CARES started after Dr. Ted Keary, a Falmouth-based dentist, traveled to Honduras in 1988—with another organization—to provide medical and dental care to the local population. While on this trip to Honduras, Keary noticed that many of the places that the group would bring their services to would not receive follow up care.

When he returned to the United States, Keary worked with others to found Cape CARES, which focuses on providing continual dental and medical care to impoverished Hondurans, not just one visit. More than 25 years after its founding, Cape CARES now operates in multiple rural areas in Honduras, including San Marcos.

“As long as there is a need for care and we have the teams to send, Cape CARES will provide services to the residents of these areas,” reads Cape CARES’s webpage.

Ng and Nguyen were in Honduras with a 17-person Cape CARES team from October 17 to 24. The team, which consisted of dental and medical professionals, worked for five days in San Marcos.

It took two days to travel from Boston to San Marcos. The volunteers flew from Boston to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, and then drove to a mid-point where they spent a night and, finally, drove to San Marcos.

The isolated one-story cement and brick building that served as the volunteers home-base for the five days had two porches, a front and a back; each about eight feet by 50 feet. The medical volunteers worked on the back porch and the dental volunteers on the front. They slept inside.

During the five days of work, the front porch was filled with dental supplies organized next to several make-shift exam chairs. Electricity was provided by a gas-fueled generator sitting in the bed of a pickup truck a few feet from the porch. Honduran patients would line up and wait their turn to be seen by Ng, Nguyen, or the other Cape CARES volunteers.

The two GSDM students saw a much higher number of patients each day and were equipped with much more limited resources than they were used to. Still, Ng and Nguyen adapted and provided the best care they could.

“(At GSDM) you have x-rays, but over there we didn’t have x-rays, we didn’t have suction, it was very primitive,” said Ng.

Despite the high number of patients and limited resources, Ng and Nguyen—as well as the other dental professionals with Cape CARES—were able to perform hundreds of tooth extractions and several other procedures, including cleanings and restorations.

“I learned a lot of technical skills in oral surgery, especially extracting root tips, severely decayed teeth, and suturing,” said Nguyen. “Because we had no x-rays, I learned how to clinically diagnose and treat the patient with only information from what I saw clinically and what the patient told me about the history of the tooth.”

The Hondurans receiving care from the Cape CARES team would frequently travel miles on foot for treatment. When they arrived each day, they would wait—sometimes for hours—for their turn.

“People are lined up all day just to get a chance to be seen,” said Nguyen. “We saw hundreds of patients a day. People dress up nice, just to come to the clinic; they kind of make it an event for the community.”

Ng said the Hondurans lining up for treatment looked up to the Cape CARES volunteers.

“We would wake up in the morning and the kids would be lined up by the fence,” said Ng. “By the middle of the week they would know all our names.”

The Cape CARES volunteers would work from about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. The volunteers used headlamps to see into the mouths of their patients, who were reclined in the makeshift exam chairs that sat atop the concert porch.

Somedays, before the patients would arrive, the volunteers would wake up early; sometimes around 4:30 a.m. and usually to the sound of wild roosters crowing and dogs barking. During these early hours, Ng and Nguyen, and the other Cape CARES volunteers, would go on hikes, practice yoga, and take in the raw beauty of rural Honduras.

On their third day at their station in Honduras, Ng and Nguyen, and four other Cape CARES volunteers, visited a school. They gave a presentation about oral hygiene and handed out toothbrushes and fluoride.

At the end of the five days, Nguyen and Ng had each seen about 40 patients, and they each performed more than 100 extractions and completed several cleanings and even a few restorations.

Ng said that while she enjoyed gaining valuable experience, she also enjoyed the people she interacted with.

“I think the best part of the externship was the people that I met,” said Ng. “The medical and dental team that we travelled with was a group of selfless, compassionate, and motivated individuals that inspired me both professionally and personally.”

She continued, “Everyone we interacted with, including the Honduran translators, the military guards, and the women who cooked and cleaned for us, were genuinely happy to help us and welcomed us with open arms.”

Nguyen said the experience was humbling.

“Overall, the experience was very humbling,” said Nguyen. “It made me more appreciative of being able to be in the position I am in today, to provide a service that has an immediate impact on the community.”

Dean Hutter extended his appreciation to Ng and Nguyen for their service.

“I am thoroughly impressed with the great work done in Honduras by Jennifer Ng and William Nguyen,” said Dean Hutter. “By all accounts, Jennifer and William were able to provide crucial oral healthcare care to Hondurans that were in critical need of it—Well Done!”

Photos from Jennifer Ng and William Nguyen externship in Honduras can be found on Facebook and Flickr.