Delivering dental care on the Tonle Sap River and Lake in Cambodia

August 2022

Tonlé Sap is a 'Great River of Freshwater' or 'Great Lakes' and is a blend of the lake and river systems in Tonle Sap and Mekong areas of Cambodia as Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake and an important point of biodiversity.

Cambodians live along the river and on the lake, they have floating villages. Access to the town of Siem Reap along the river is either a long ride by tuk tuk or a donkey cart. On the lake, Cambodians travel on canoes to the land and then on land by different means of travel.

Health care is delivered to the inhabitants by an NGO- The Lake Clinic (TLC). People needing medical services travel by boat to TLC hub which is a boat located on the river and another boat located on the Lake. Patients come to the hub for medical treatment mostly in their canoes.

In August, I had an opportunity to take care of the dental needs of the school children in the schools along the Tonle Sap river and the schools on the floating village.

This is how it worked

The staff of TLC in Siem Reap loads up the van with all supplies including kitchen supplies and we drove to the banks of the river where we loaded up the supplies on a canoe and headed to our House Boat Hub

Loading and Unloading the Van for the trip to the River

The next step is to put our dental supplies on our canoe and tread the water of the river to the designated school where we put up shop in one of the classrooms.

There were two Cambodian dentists Dr. Nassa and Dr. Sambho on our team and me. We treated students who came into our makeshift clinic from different classrooms and we applied SDF on ALL carious teeth and Fluoride Varnish. We also extracted root tips and abscessed teeth.

This kind of work continued for 2 other schools. We headed back in the evening to our TLC hub, had dinner, and set up our sleeping quarters under the mosquito nets on our boat and lights out at 8 pm.

Demonstrating the Application of SDF and Treating Children on the Boat

IMG_9835 Showing Dr. Nasaa, how to apply SDF.jpg

We worked for 3 days and spent 2 nights in our Stationary Houseboat and then headed back to Siem Reap. Downloaded our equipment and the staff went home and I went to my hotel.

Week 2, the adventure was on the lake. The lake is about 2 hours driving distance from Siem Reap. We had the same setup on the Lake. Our own houseboat which served as our Hub. At the Hub, the patients come for their medical treatment from their floating homes..

We set up the school desks for our treatment. One by one the patients came in for the application of SDF and Fluoride varnish. We did some extractions as well.

In total with 2 dentists and 2 assistants, we saw 345 patients in 4 days.

Dr. Thourida Hun a physician came with us to the school and floating villages. She was such a sport that she learned how to diagnose dental decay and abscesses and applied SDF on carious teeth. She was a great help to the dental team.