A community dental nurse from Beckenham is travelling to Malawi to deliver life-changing dental care for people who have no other access to treatment.

Angela Powell works for Kings College Hospital as a community dental nurse. She is volunteering with Dentaid and will be working alongside local dental professionals to help them reach more people in poor and remote communities.

The team will visit schools, orphanages, prisons and rural villages to deliver pain-relieving dental treatment and oral health programmes. Over the two-week trip in March 2023, the team will treat hundreds of people suffering the misery of untreated toothache.

Dentaid supports overseas dental professionals all year round by funding outreach programmes and providing portable equipment that can be used to deliver care without access to running water or electricity. The charity’s volunteering teams work alongside them, sharing expertise and setting up clinics in communities that would otherwise have to travel many miles to visit the dentist.

Jill Harding, Dentaid’s communications director, said, “The World Health Organization states that oral diseases affect nearly 3.5 billion people and untreated dental caries is the most common health condition globally. Dentaid is a charity that works to increase access to safe, sustainable dental care by enabling dental professionals to reach more people. We are delighted to have Angela joining our team in Malawi and they will help many people out of dental pain. Equally importantly, they will be teaching the importance of oral health and looking after your teeth in the hope of preventing more people from suffering toothache in the future.”

Angela said, “I chose to volunteer as I love working with people and trying to help them. Hopefully, I can use my dental nurse skills to help both the local community and the local healthcare professionals. I am looking forward to meeting the rest of the volunteers where together we can hopefully make a difference.”

To fund her volunteering trip, Angela must fundraise £800. To do this, she will run a half marathon and has set up a Just Giving page where supporters can donate.

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