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Why a Dental Clinic?
 Half of the school children in Uganda live with dental pain. Compare this with only 5% of American children reporting the same problem. The children of Africa deserve our help. We can help them.
As you read this, Restoration Gateway's dental clinic is under construction. This will be the only dental care facility accessible to upwards of half a million Ugandans in the districts surrounding RG. Due to lack of facilities, lack of dental professionals and lack of attention to dental needs, there is almost no information available regarding dental health in Uganda. This reveals a tremendous need.
The children at RG asked Dr. Tim how he still had so many teeth. They were surprised because the norm in the Ugandan bush is for people to lose many teeth throughout adulthood. They have no way to restore dental cavities, so when one develops, it continues to worsen until it becomes abscessed. When the pain becomes too great, an untrained villager attempts to extract the tooth, frequently resulting in a broken tooth with the roots left in the jaw.
There are only 250 dentists in Uganda. Even if they were dispersed equally across the nation and every person had access to them, each dentist would have 138,000 patients! But dentists are not dispersed. 76% work in and around Kampala, even though Uganda is a rural nation. So 3/4 of dentists serve only 1/4 of the population, leaving the remaining approximately 60 dentists with the impossible task of serving 25 million+ people. That's a ratio of 1:420,000, or the equivalent of only one dentist serving the entire population living in the city limits of Atlanta, Georgia! RG's dental center will also serve as a training facility for dental students.
 So you see...we have to help. We must do something to provide greater dental access for more people. Not helping is not an option. Thank you for partnering with us to make this a reality. Learn more about the dental center at www.restorationgateway.org/dental. |
 Volunteer an Evening With Your Small GroupWant to change the world? A great place to start is simply volunteering a couple of hours to help the Waco office load a shipping container to send to RG. If you would like to bring some friends from your church or school for an evening or Saturday of loading boxes or equipment to be shipped, contact Allison Todd. |
