Free Dental Care Provided
June 30th, 2009
Free Dental Care Has More People Smiling
The Mission of Mercy Program is providing free dental care Friday and Saturday. The event is putting smiles back on faces and even changing some people’s lives.
The Program treated 721 patients Friday, one of those people was John Sanders. Now, he’s finding a lot more to smile about.
Dental faculty, students, alumni provide free care in Pikeville
Nolan Jeffreys smiled as he rubbed his jaw, slightly swollen and still numb as a result of the wisdom tooth extraction he had just undergone.
“That’s the first time” he’d had a tooth pulled, he said, and he was impressed. “They had me in and out of there in, like, five minutes. I was expecting it to hurt a lot worse.”
Jeffreys, of Robinson Creek in Pike County, was one of more than 500 patients treated June 27 and 28 in a dental clinic at Pike County Central High School. Staffed primarily by UofL faculty, staff, students and alumni, the dental clinic was part of the Remote Area Medical (RAM) Kentucky program.
RAM Kentucky is part of a national effort to provide free health care in such underserved areas as Appalachia. Stan Brock, one of Marlin Perkins’s assistants in the old TV show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” started the program 24 years ago in Knoxville, Tenn. RAM offers free medical exams and education in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cholesterol, breast and cervical cancer and other areas; dental cleanings, fillings and extraction; and eye exams and free glasses. It expanded into Kentucky in 2008.
Stimulus money boosts health clinics serving poor
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Homeless teenagers at a central Colorado shelter are feeling the effect of the government’s economic stimulus package. It’s the feeling of a dentist’s drill.
The 20 runaway youths living at the Urban Peak shelter had no regular dental care until this spring, when a $1.3 million stimulus grant to a community health center paid for a mobile dental and medical clinic to visit once a month. The residents now get medical and dental screenings, and cavities filled, right from their shelter’s parking lot.
MOM effort considered another success
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Volunteer oral-health professionals treated more than 1,100 people at the Eastern Panhandle Mission of Mercy free dental clinic Friday and Saturday at Hedgesville (W.Va.) High School, organizers said Monday.
A final report detailing the number of patients served and value of services provided at the event, including health screenings for vision, hearing, blood pressure and diabetes, is still being completed, according to United Way of the Eastern Panhandle Executive Director Jan Callen.
Van brings dental care to people who can’t pay
Every morning for the past three years, Carl Bodda, 28, of Salem, awoketo throbbing from a tooth so severe that he popped several ibuprofen pills daily just so he wouldn’t have to hold his jaw constantly.
Bodda was one of the 17 adults receiving free dental care Monday by a traveling Medical Teams International dental clinic that was sponsored by a coalition of Four Corners churches.
Patients heard of the services through the five participating congregations: Christ the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Trinity United Methodist Church, Grace Baptist Church, Tabernaculo de Salem and Iglesia El Buen Pastor.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com
Categories: Dental News
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