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!
Good luck Dr Bethy!
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