Catch me if you can

So... Had the meeting with the minister of health last night and I was really impressed with her response. She seemed genuinely interested in listening to our presentation and took the time to discuss and critique our findings. I have to say though, I had a bit of a moment of wondering WTF I was doing. As we approached security of the government buildings and as I opened my laptop with our presentation and talked about our findings I couldn't help feeling a bit like Leonardo Dicaprio (not in Titanic!) in catch me if you can. The random turn of events; getting on a plane to fly half way around the world to collaborate with people I'd never met in person and then presenting my findings to the highest level of government representative... RANDOM!

Luckily this little girl from Reporoa had two things going for her (1) a copy of her degree to present for authentication and to remind her that she had actually worked to get here and (2) her bluff hadn't been called yet! Haha!

Holes for Ecuador

My time counting teeth has nearly come to an end. We'll see approximately 600 children by the end of the week and most of them were riddled with holes. It's hard to blame just one thing for this problem but I can think of a few culprits... The favourite snack of children is an iced sugar water known as bolos. The particular joy of this beauty is that babies can suck on it even before they have teeth and so decay is being initiated before the kid even reaches one year old. By the time they are three years old a lot of the damage is already done. By the time the kid hits school it is just a case of how deep the hole is and how much they are leaking pus or complaining of tooth ache. 

I guess the good news is that we can change it from the ground up and we've found that the earlier we get the babies into the program the better the outcomes. We have a meeting with the minister of health on Friday evening and that is what we' re going to try and say... Wish me (us) luck!

Who would have thought?

Yesterday when riding on the top of a bus to get home, dodging branches of trees from the edge of the Amazonian jungle, I had a moment of appreciating life in general. I remember sitting in social studies and Miss Douglas teaching us about the Amazon forest and how it totally captured my imagination... I never thought I would actually be able to say I had seen the Amazon forest or done dentistry in the middle if a banana plantation... It's pretty cool!

A tooth by any other name

Ecuador marks the fourth country that I have practiced dentistry... And like always there are some interesting philosophies surrounding treatment provision that usually reflect the underlying cultural undertones. The lonely planet guide says that ecuadorians have one thing in common: a true disdain for the current political powers and for the next ones to come in and stuff things up. We experienced this today when a ministry of health dentist came to inspect our mobile field set-up... They weren't too worried about infection control, just expiry dates! Unfortunately some of our fluoride products were out of date, an offence that could have shut us down, luckily a bit of smooth talking got us in the clear (phew!).

Soo... Other than the MOH everyone else here is quite lovely. The group is made up of all women and one man (eeeek) there are three older women who all happen to be going through the hot flushes of menopause (quite entertaining) 10 or so Berkeley students (some under grad some at 'grad school') and a few locals. All-in-all they are a real pleasure to work with. Each of them have a reasonable grasp of the Spanish language and have been gracious enough to guide me through a few basics so now I know that 'diente' is tooth.

The children's teeth here are pretty comparable to Cambodia; however, the kids are generally a pretty normal size so maybe a three-year-old child here is the same as a five-year-old Cambodian. There are definitely a few more resources around and with any luck they might get a half-good government one of these days that only changes the laws once per week rather than three and a half!

Ecuadorian dentists at work