VOLUNTEER WORK
Volunteer Work
EXCERPT ADAPTED FROM THE NEWCASTLE HERALD ARTICLE IN 2014:
Some know how to put a smile on people’s faces. Putting smiles on a nation, however, is a challenge of another magnitude.
Some know how to put a smile on people’s faces. Putting smiles on a nation, however, is a challenge of another magnitude.
To reduce pain and suffering for children in Papua New Guinea and bring back their smiles, Novocastrian oral and maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Barry Reed decided to travel abroad.
With the support of the YWAM charity, Dr. Reed has been expanding the ‘Brighten A Smile’ preventive dental health campaign he initiated as a volunteer with the Kokoda Track Foundation charity in 2013. The program was established to reduce this widespread affliction of children in PNG’s Oro Province, the location of the iconic Kokoda campaign of WWII.
It was part of his ongoing involvement to assist our neighbours to the north who played such a pivotal role in our nation’s military folklore, evacuating our wounded soldiers and carrying vital supplies over the famous mountainous jungle track in 1942.
Returning for his fourth aid visit in the last two years, Dr. Reed was a volunteer as part of a dental team in Oro Province aboard the YWAM charity medical aid ship MV Pacific Link, an old converted trawler.
Now nearing the end of its useful life, this ship has been delivering much needed medical aid to remote PNG villagers over the past 5 years and helping repay the outstanding help given to Australia by the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, who came from PNG.
Visitors to the Newcastle Foreshore may have noticed the impressive MV Ammari currently moored near The Brewery. The YWAM charity arranged for this ship to make a goodwill visit to raise donations for its purchase to replace the worn out MV Pacific Link. This ship would expand medical aid for the children and adults of PNG, helping to alleviate many serious health problems such as malaria, tuberculosis and the often neglected ‘epidemic’ of dental disease.
‘Dental disease is the world’s single most common cause of pain and is the most common disease in the world’, Dr. Reed said.
‘Children in pain miss school and growth, and development can suffer.
‘On the YWAM ship visit, the dental team treated over two hundred children and adults to relieve pain and initiated the “Brighten A Smile” program at another three schools. We also conducted research to help reduce the dental disease problem.
‘One girl, only four years old, had twelve infected, abscessed teeth, with pain for one year.
‘One adult in a remote village had an infected growth which had destroyed over half of his jaw in less than two years and needed a lengthy operation to remove it.’
A survey of Kokoda Track villages by Dr. Reed in 2012 revealed that 95 percent of adults and 63 percent of children had decayed teeth, with 37% of the adults in pain at the time from decay or infection. This survey found there were nearly two decayed teeth on average per child and nearly 3 decayed teeth per adult.
Dr. Reed has given past service to the people of Newcastle for 21 years as a specialist surgeon at John Hunter Hospital and continues in private practice, as well as an officer in the High Readiness Specialist Reserve with the Royal Australian Air Force. He also functions as a lecturer at Newcastle University.
He had first developed this school-based preventive dental program in 2007 while deployed on the Australian Army Aboriginal Community Assistance Program at a remote community near the Gulf of Carpentaria while serving as an Army Reserve officer.
‘The Kokoda Track Foundation started the “Brighten A Smile” program in 2013 from my lobbying and initial efforts’, Dr. Reed said.
‘This preventive health program was in 40 schools for 5000 children around the Kokoda Track.
The ‘Brighten A Smile’ provided training and teaching materials for school teachers to supervise schoolchildren to brush their teeth while at school with a supply of fluoride toothpastes and brushes, as well as dental educational support to community health workers. This preventive dental health program treated 5000 school children at its peak.
US research has found that over time, tooth decay may be reduced by up to 50 to 60 percent with Dr. Reed’s simple initiative.