Connecticut, United States
Panama
India
Vietnam
Honduras
Haiti

Dominican Republic
Ethiopia
Mozambique
Sierra Leone
Guatemala
Inglewood, California
El Salvador

From Connecticut, United States

The Mission of Mercy concept was first created about seven years ago, when the Virginia Dental Association organized an event. Last month Connecticut ran it's second annual MOM.  

The event, taking a solid year of planning, is set up as a MASH style dental clinic. The aim is to treat whoever presents themselves, regardless of ability to pay, insurance coverage, residency status, etc. We do not ask for payment of any kind from our patients. Our patients are mostly the uninsured or under insured; those who keep putting off dental treatment due to the cost.  

This year we were able to treat 1800 patients during a two-day clinic. The value of treatment performed exceeded $750,000. The value of dental x-rays taken (including digital panoramic images) was over $34,000. To give you an idea of the enormity of the event, we had 100 portable dental chairs in use and performed examinations, x-rays, fillings, cleanings, root canals, immediate partial dentures, and over 1,000 extractions. We had close to 1,000 volunteers.

Having the use of digital radiography in an environment as rustic and basic as a Mission of Mercy is a luxury. The NOMADs at CTMOM allowed us to take the standard of care in this setting to a much higher level. Oral surgeons were not blindly extracting teeth. Endodontists could visualize root curvatures and do quality root canals. Dental cavities were not overlooked because dentists don't have x-ray vision!

In short, the NOMADS allowed us to diagnose and treat patients more accurately, more efficiently, and safely. A giant "thank you" from every patient and volunteer.
  
Brian S. Duchan, DMD
CTMOM Radiology Department Chief
Trustee, Connecticut Foundation for Dental Outreach
Immediate Past President, Connecticut State Dental Association

From Panama:

The NOMAD Handheld X-ray System was recently used in our volunteer work in Panama. The NOMAD unit was truly instrumental in broadening the services we could provide to the impoverished indigenous communities!
 
Mission Save a Smile journeyed by dugout canoes into the rainforests of Panama to extend the reach of dentistry to those lacking access to a traditional dental clinic. Utilizing the NOMAD coupled with digital sensors and a laptop, full service dentistry is possible in communities without electricity or running water. Working 10 to 12 hour days, restorations, extractions and root canal work all started with diagnostic imagery made possible by the NOMAD.

Dental decay is a disease, and within the indigenous communities we serve it is an epidemic. Breaking this cyclic occurrence weighs heavily upon preventative and restorative treatment. The use of the NOMAD unit allows us to diagnose and save teeth often doomed for loss.
 
Each night the villagers gathered around our portable dental clinic for an evening of entertainment, amazed at the imagery produced by the NOMAD and our abilities to change one's smile.
 
Thanks for being a partner of our commitment to make a difference in these communities and for helping to save a smile!!!
 
Chris Burseth, DDS
Mission Save a Smile
missionsaveasmile@hotmail.com

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the Aribex NOMAD. It allowed me to fulfill my dream of giving thorough dental treatment to 76 orphans and the staff taking care of them. 

I have been going on missions with Los Medicos Voladores (LMV), (flyingdocs.org) for 27 years to remote areas in Mexico and Central America. In the small villages of these areas I
have always just been able to treat problems that could be seen visually.

Two years ago I was invited to come to India by the pastor of a Christian Church to help the children in the orphanage he established in a remote area north of Bombay. My wife and I have been supporting this center for several years. The children range in ages from 4 to 18 and none of them have ever seen a dentist. I started planning the trip and became excited to help these children who have no access to dental care.

In order to complete this mission I felt I needed to get an x-ray machine to the orphanage. I was unsuccessful in contacting the local dentists to ask them how they or a supply company might help me with a used one and perhaps get it installed. Two months before the planned trip took place I decided to pursue other avenues. I saw the NOMAD at the last dental convention and knew that with my Dexis digital system on my laptop that this would be the perfect solution.

The unit worked perfectly and in only five hours my daughter and I were able to do two to four bitewing x-rays on all 76 of the children, examine each x-ray, add the needed periapicals, and give each child a quick visual examination. That was much faster than being restricted with a wall mount unit.

We completely treated every child with dental problems and were able to do the same for the 15 staff members. I can see why any dentist setting up his office would be foolish to put in stationary x-ray units. The versatility of the NOMAD is incredible. Thank you, thank, you, thank you.

Adrian D. Fenderson DDS
All About Smiles
Napa, CA

Photos from top: A Bombay woman gets her first-ever dental x-ray. Looking at the results on a laptop. Dr. Fenderson and friends show their appreciation.

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“Since 1996, the East Meets West foundation (EMW) has operated the first permanently-based humanitarian dental program permitted in Vietnam. Since that time the organization has treated almost 48,000 children with a full range of free modern dental services, including exams, cleanings, fluoride treatments, sealants, alloy and resin fillings, root canals and extractions.

“’We really needed a portable unit to take on our outreach trips and for use in the new mobile dental trailer,’ says Dee Dee Nguyen, Development Officer for the organization. ‘NOMAD is perfect because it is so lightweight, safe and reliable.’

“The NOMAD is used continuously every day, either at their clinic, their mobile trailer or on the outreach trips. The program now treats almost 10,000 children each year and provides over 40,000 dental services.

“EMW is the only organization providing dental care to the rural areas of central Vietnam. The children assisted are all disadvantaged or under-served, and there are no other free clinics or options for the poor. Patients must either pay at a private clinic in Danang or endlessly suffer. Most families cannot afford to have even emergency care performed. The country just now is starting to put dental nurses into primary schools, but they have almost no supplies or equipment.

 “’The NOMAD is a great product. In fact, this device will be one of the first portable x-ray units to be used out in children's centers and rural clinic areas since the end of the Vietnam War.’”

Here is a member of the Green Team from Washington Overseas Mission using our NOMAD. With our NOMAD we were able to determine which teeth were non-restorable under the circumstances in which we were working. The images saved us the time needed to open and excavate the caries. We also treated an 18 year old girl with a mass on the right side of her mandible. The NOMAD image allowed us to rule out infection as the cause and prevented us from opening into a potentially dangerous mass. The young lady was referred to a surgeon in Honduras for excision, biopsy, definitive diagnosis and hopefully reconstructive surgery.

How wonderful it was to do extractions with radiographic images. We used our NOMAD to take between 20 and 30 images per day. We used NOMAD to verify both root tip location and complete root tip extraction. 

Joseph S Grimaud, DDS

A Honduran man gets his first x-ray from a volunteer using a NOMAD.

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From Haiti:

Temple University School of Dentistry has been traveling to the country of Haiti for the last 15 years, providing emergency dental work to individuals in need. Our trip this year was the first ever to have diagnostic x-rays at our treatment sites of the rural Haitian villages, thanks to the NOMAD portable handheld x-ray unit by Aribex. 

Patients line up early in the morning and wait hours to be treated. In the course of a week, our outreach teams administer treatment for about 1,000 Haitians. This Temple Dental School outreach trip is often the only chance this community has to see a dentist and alleviate their dental pain and in some cases serious dental infections.

There is no electricity, no suction, no high speed handpiece, let alone x-ray equipment.  In years past, surgical extractions were performed without knowing exactly what was underneath the gums and bone, which presented rather timely and difficult procedures. 

During the trip this year, the NOMAD was used multiple times to aid in the visualization of angled roots, remaining root tips, and other pathology. The NOMAD was used to aid in diagnosis and treatment planning of teeth that were predicted as difficult extractions, and it was also used when an extraction became complicated and visualization of root tips became necessary. On any given day, the NOMAD was used on approximately fifteen patients.   

Cory Johnston
Temple University School of Dentistry
Haiti Club Secretary

More From Haiti:

Global Smile International is a non-profitable organization founded in 2006 by Dr. Rolando Estrabillo. Global Smile provides free basic and emergency dentistry for the Hamilton, Ontario community. Its vision is to expand this service globally to the developing countries.

In May 2009 Dr. Estrabillo and 6 other colleagues joined St. Margaret Mary Parish to volunteer their time and skills for a very remote mountainous area in Haiti. After five hours of trekking across 10 mountains by foot, motorcycle and mule, the team reached St. Gabriel Parish, Beau Sejour, Haiti. Exhausted, sore, but high in spirits the team went into full swing next day treating the villagers.

For many of the villagers Dr. Estrabillo is the first dentist they have ever seen. The villagers came as early as 4 AM, travelling for two hours with hopes of being seen and treated. At 7:30 AM, when the clinic started hundreds of people were already lined up. The dental clinic was simple, made of bare concrete with no dental equipment, no suctions, no hand pieces. The supplies that the team brought were the only supplies available.

The team was especially grateful for the NOMAD x-ray. Radiographs were taken on every client.  Most had full mouth series of x-rays, due to severe decay and clinical infection. The presence of the radiographs provided accurate diagnosis and proper treatment. Even though our only treatment of choice was extractions, it gave visualization to Dr. Estrabillo for many difficult situations.

The NOMAD equipment was so vital to every case that we treated whether the cases involved simple, difficult, complicated, erupted, impacted, primary, or permanent teeth . We also would not have been able to treat the many villagers we saw in such a short period of time. The NOMAD gave us the perfect road map to so many bleak situations that would have presented to us blindly.

Thank you, Aribex, for your ingenious creation of the NOMAD. You have been instrumental to the lives we helped in Beau Sejour, Haiti.

Ada Naguit
Restorative Dental Hygienist, Ontario, Canada

Photos, from top: Taking a NOMAD x-ray in Haiti. Dozens of Haitians ln line for dental work. A makeshift dental clinic in Haiti. A volunteer treats a Haitian man for the first time ever.

More From Haiti:

Truthfully, words cannot describe the experience that we had serving the people of Haiti that suffered from the earthquake in January 2010. As the entire world has seen from the media coverage in Port Au Prince, the need in the entire country of Haiti is great. It is wonderful to be able to serve a need with a skill that we have learned in dental school. 

Every year, a few third and fourth year students along with a few faculty members travel to a small city of Jeremie, approximately 100 miles west of Port Au Prince. We spend a week traveling to nearby villages performing dental extractions and other oral surgical procedures to relieve pain and infection. The trip this year was nearly compromised due to the 7.0 earthquake that hit the country’s capital.

The previous year we were given the opportunity to take a NOMAD x-ray unit with us. We initially did not expect how amazing the portability and diagnostic capabilities that it provided would be ideal for our trip. We felt that it was truly a necessity this year and we were so grateful to have the NOMAD with us. 

The conditions in which we are working are very primitive. The villages are located at least 2 hour rides by 4x4 vehicles from the city of Jeremie. The group uses portable dental chairs and instruments brought with us from the US. 

From the Dominican Republic:

A few weeks back I was with Dr. Roy Hammond and a large group of our Crown Council members in the Dominican Republic and had the opportunity to use the portable Aribex unit. It was fabulous. Dr. Jeff Gray who was with us even did a series of root canals. It was awesome!

Greg Anderson, Director
Crown Council, Inc.

From Ethiopia:

“<We used> a NOMAD unit for our dental mission trip to Ethiopia. We found it extremely easy to use and acquire high-quality images.”

Gregory F. Gullo DDS
Canandaigua, New York

From Mozambique:

My family and I recently had the privilege of traveling to Mozambique with two other dentists, two physicians, twelve nurses, a construction crew and a food crew. There were 83 of us in total. All of us chose to participate in the humanitarian mission for our working vacation.

We three dentists are very thankful for your NOMAD! The NOMAD worked flawlessly in conjunction with our laptop computer, digital sensor and software. We use the NOMAD on every dental patient we treated. We held our clinics either in very primitive churches, including some with mud walls, or out in the open air.

With the images the NOMAD generated, we were able to properly diagnose, to inform and educate our patients. We were able to do root canals, tooth colored filling and of course extractions. We could not have done these procedures without the NOMAD. The NOMAD allowed us to provide high quality dentistry literally "in the field" with confidence.

Thank you and all your good people at Aribex!

Ronald L. Rasmussen, DDS
Sacramento, CA

From Sierra Leone:

Women for Women of Sierra Leone, Inc. (WWSL) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization, whose purpose is to improve the personal, social, and economic conditions of, especially, women and children in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone, West Africa, who have suffered severely from the strife and upheaval in that country, and who are in desperate need of assistance. WWSL recently returned from a humanitarian mission in the poorest country in the world.

Sierra Leone has fewer than 55 qualified government physicians and 5 dentists to serve the 6,000,000 people of the country. The country has the highest rate of infant mortality, and almost everyone complains of malaria. Hernia claims the lives of many—especially in the hinterland—and most people there are unable to read and write in English (the official language taught in schools). Much of the country gets up in the morning not knowing where their next meal will come from. 

The Sierra Leone Ministry of Health counts on WWSL for the difference it makes in the lives of the poorest of the poor, and the U.S. Embassy in Sierra Leone continues to show its support for the humanitarian work WWSL performs in that country. The Aribex NOMAD has been found to be of utmost importance in treating the people of this region.

For more information, visit their website at http://www.wwsl-inc.org/about.html.

Photos from top right: Some of the volunteers from WWSL; a volunteer dentists treats a Sierra Leone man; NOMAD takes its place of honor in the clinic.

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Guatemala:

Your NOMAD Portable X-ray was a tremendous success with all six of the dentists and the hygienist on our humanitarian trip to Guatemala.

The NOMAD made it possible for the first time to do root canal therapy on several patients’ front teeth that in the past would have been extracted. It is companies like Aribex that help make this mission possible for the Guatemalan people.

Thank you from all of us for the NOMAD. I love it.

Bruce G. Newman, DDS
Menomonee Falls, WI

Pictures from top: The only dental clinic in Guatemala, staffed by volunteers; a church missionary in Guatemala gets a NOMAD x-ray from a volunteer dental worker.

From Inglewood, California:

In August of 2009 the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps staged a week-long humanitarian effort at The Forum in Inglewood, California, providing free health and dental care for thousands of local individuals. The NOMAD Handheld X-ray was found to be of great benefit to the dozens of health professionals who volunteered their time. The following are excerpts from letters from two of the participants.

The ability to quickly take x-rays without moving the patients allowed us to see more patients than would have been possible. There is no way to accurately quantify the difference the Nomad made but you are probably responsible for enabling us to deliver care to hundreds more patients than would have been otherwise possible. It also enabled us to provide some endodontic care which might not have been attempted without the NOMAD.

It is also noteworthy that the unit was handled by hundreds of different dentists and assistants over 8 days. No one had a problem using it.  It also had the feel of a quality piece of electronics - it seems amazingly durable.

I am definitely getting a NOMAD Pro for my office.

Roger Fieldman, DDS
Los Angeles, California

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I cannot thank you enough for your NOMAD x-ray unit. It was used by multiple people with ease and soon became the main x-ray source at our event. NOMAD was so efficient that in the first day it surpassed all other x-ray units that were at the even in terms of ease of use and sheer numbers of people able to be diagnosed quickly and subsequently receive treatment. Dentists and assistants were fighting over who would be using the NOMAD next.

Your x-ray unit helped nearly 8000 people in 8 days and I will strongly recommend NOMAD to every dentist I meet. It is fabulous.

Cheryl D. Goldasich, DDS
Torrance, CA

Photo: A volunteer dentist examines x-rays taken with the NOMAD while the patient waits during the RAM/LA free humanitarian clinic in Inglewood, CA. Courtesy The New York Times.

From El Salvador:

[We used the NOMAD] for the USC Advanced Endodontics Program’s El Salvador Humanitarian Effort. We were able to treat fifteen patients for non-surgical root canal treatment and two patients for surgical endodontics. Residents from the USC School of Dentistry’s Advanced Endodontics Program had the opportunity to not only treat patients of the San Salvador community, but also teach student dentists at the Univeridad Evangelica de El Salvador School of Dentistry.

The NOMAD was essential in taking pre-operative radiographs, radiographs of work length for root canal treatment, and final radiographs. The portability and ease of use was a great addition to usage in limited clinical environments.

Sincerely,

Andrew Lin, DDS
University of Southern California School of Dentistry
Advanced Endodontics