Local Dentist in Mercy Visit to Africa

Raffaella volunteers to help save children’s teeth in Sierra Leone

Popular Chiswick-based dentist Raffaella Gabassi (BDS) is calling on locals to donate unwanted toys, clothes, or even buy toothbrushes to help with her relief trip to Sierra Leone in March.

Shocking statistics reveal that while in the UK, there is one dentist ( NHS) for every 2,400 people, the figure for war-ravaged Sierra Leone is 1 dentist per 1.1 million. Many children do not know basic dental hygiene, do not own toothbrushes and may never have seen toothpaste. There are only five dentists for 5.7 million people.

Raffaella will spend two weeks volunteering at a hospital in Freetown, and will also visit schools, and train up young women to educate local people in basic dental health hygiene.

This is her third volunteer trip, following two successful visits to Vietnam.

Raffaella, who is principal dentist at the White Dental and Cosmetic Rooms on 128, Chiswick High Road, would love items which would help to make children’s lives easier in the African country which has some 75% of the world’s amputees, following the brutal ten-year war which ended in 2002.

“ I am looking for anything that would make a child smile- soft toys, teeshirts, toys, pencils, or any other donations which I could bring over on my trip” says the Italian-born dentist who has been working in Chiswick since 2009.

Her trip is on behalf of the Sierra Leona Six-Year Molar Focus School, a mission set up ten years ago.

“ It might look like just another drop in the ocean, but even the ocean is made up by individual droplets, and every dollar will go toward helping these children by treating them and also towards educating the mothers to prevent tooth decay and unnecessary suffering” she says.

Donations of items can be dropped into the clinic at 128, Chiswick High Road, or financial donations through Firstgiving.com.

January 23, 2012