Norwich dentist travels 6,600 miles to Peru to give treatment

A dentist has returned from a 6,600-mile (10,600km) trip to Peru where he helped to provide “rewarding” emergency dental care to more than 1,000 children in rural areas.

Gautam Sharma works at West Earlham Dental Practice in Norwich and he is part of the Dental Mavericks organisation.

Its aim is to support provide dental relief in vulnerable communities focusing on ending people’s tooth pain with dignified and patient-led care.

Mr Sharma, said: “We don’t have the best chair or the best light, but when you’re doing treatment for people on a deck chair with a head torch, it really takes you back to the why you became a dentist.”

This is not Mr Sharma’s first trip abroad to provide dental care, previously he has travelled to the Syrian border and to the mountains of Morocco.

He said: “Tooth pain is really, really painful for these people who don’t have access in these rural areas to dentistry, whereas something which might be a simple filling fix here, over there it might be you have to physically take teeth out.

“As soon as you lose teeth, oral health suffers… we went to schools and did some oral health education, which is important as a lasting legacy to not just treat, but educate.”

Mr Sharma says the treatment is “army level” with dentists bringing their own equipment due to a lack of drills on location.

He said patients at his Norfolk practice have been supportive.

“We’ve had huge donations where they’ve knitted little toys or donated Norwich shirts, toothbrushes and toothpaste… it shows people do care,” he said.

One of his most memorable moments from the trip included treating a child.

“There was a kid who wanted a filling… he came back as we were closing the clinic down; he was in agony and we ended up taking that tooth out which could have been saveable in this country,” he said.

“You could see the tears in his eyes and the happiness because you knew he wasn’t having to have this pain and put that cost on his parents to travel to a main city.

“It was really rewarding.”

Mr Sharma said he would be going on another trip with the Dental Mavericks charity next year.