Salt Lake City dentist plans third trip to Uganda

ELKO, Nev. (AP) — When pediatric dentist Thomas Sorensen packs for his trip to Africa in January, he will be taking dental supplies, local anesthesia, surgical gloves and masks.

"Most of my luggage will be equipment and supplies, and we will ship a lot of stuff over," he said.

Sorensen will be making his third trip to Uganda to continue training public health dental officers and visiting schools, where he examines children's teeth and helps the dental officers spread the word about dental care.

"I'm working with a Canadian dentist and will work with the public health dental officers in district health centers," said Sorensen, who has a private practice in Salt Lake City and practices at Elko Dental Specialists two or three days a week.

They also plan to visit Rwanda during their two weeks in Africa in late January and early February to deliver three equipped dental chairs, and they will take along a technician to show people how to maintain the equipment. The dental school there now has only two fully equipped dental chair units.

The dentists will explain what they do in Uganda, as well.

"They want to see what we're doing, and they are even in worse shape," Sorensen said.

In Uganda, the public health dental officers are one year shy of full training to be dentists, and much of what they do is extract teeth in clinics that have no electricity for powering drills to fill cavities, so the dentists are teaching them how to save teeth, when possible, without the advantage of electricity.

They teach a traumatic restorative technique that can be done without power.

"We … show them how to sterilize equipment, and we give them equipment," Sorensen said. "We show them how to do oral health presentations, and we screen children in the sixth grade.

"One of the biggest problems besides decay is the children get gum disease really bad," Sorensen said. "It pretty surprised us there were as many problems as there were."

He said the children are eating more sugar and drinking more soft drinks as the Western influence reaches them, but he doesn't know how many dental problems they had in the years when there wasn't Western influence.

"Adults are missing multiple teeth," Sorensen said.