For this year’s World Oral health day activity, I thought we should reach out to the unreached community in my city where I have been practicing. I scouted and weighed different options and finally settled for the Enugu Muslim community.I went further to meet their community leaders in February and they pleased we did the project before their Ramadan Fast and that was the reason we chose the set date.
The Pre-Ramadan Dental care project we provided for the Enugu Muslim community was done at their Mosque premise on a Friday which also was their worship day and our services to them included: free dental consultation, oral health education, routine dental cleaning and distribution of oral care kits all at ‘no’ cost. All these were done free of charge.
The project was published on Five (5) local newspapers by the Newsagency Nigeria (NAN) which are;
1. Afriquecast:
*RAMADAN: FOUNDATION PROVIDES FREE DENTAL CARE TO MUSLIMS IN ENUGU*
https://afriquecast.com/blog/461/ramadan-foundation-provides-free-denta…
2. Pulse.ng
https://www.pulse.ng/news/local/300-enugu-muslims-get-free-dental-care-…
3. Fatshimetrie
https://eng.fatshimetrie.org/2024/03/09/dental-health-before-ramadan-aw…
4. Firstnewsng
https://firstnewsng.com/uncategorized/foundation-offers-free-dental-car…
5. Voice of Nigeria
https://von.gov.ng/foundation-provides-free-dental-care-for-muslims-in-… and two (2) photonews transcribed in Hausa and Arabic languages.
We equally had Colgate brand partner with us. They provided free Colgate toothpastes for all participants.
This project was funded and powered by Oak Aid Foundation in collaboration with Oak Aid Dental Clinic whom I - Gloria Kasi, Arinze happen to be the Director.
All our Dental Female Team members including myself wore the Muslim Hijab despite our various religious beliefs.
This act made the Muslim community feel safe and comfortable to accept the free professional dental care we brought for them, as it was our own way of giving back to society.
As a licensed and practicing Dental therapist in Nigeria, I took the time to educate the Muslim community on the need for dental care with an interpreter who broke down our dental care message in their language for easy comprehension.
We specifically requested for this because our aim is to have the Muslim locals know their dental health have direct impacts on general health and for them to understand best East’s to care for their teeth.
We equally used the avenue to appeal to Nigerians to always visit dental clinics when they are faced with dental issues instead of trial and errors.
Another reason of this project is to let Nigerians who are not tech savvy and may rarely come across our online dental care campaigns are high was why we went all out to reach out to these group of people because dental care is for everyone both the children and adults as anyone can have mouth odour, tooth decay, and other dental complications.
Dental complication is not a death sentence. It is the reason we encourage people to see a dentist if something you don’t know is going on around your teeth to get checked than taking concoction in the name of treating teeth problems.
This event cost our clinic and company a whole lot of finance and man power to execute, from providing full power for the mosque
We really loved reaching out to the Enugu Muslim community and live forward to doing more.
Gloria Kasi, Arinze