AMDA Peace Clinic in Bodhgaya, India has been providing various community health and social development services to the people of Bodhgaya, especially in Mastipur area, since its inception in 2009. APC conducted its first free dental clinic on Saturday the 30
th of January. The free service to the community will be provided regularly as a monthly clinic. This program is being implemented as part of AMDA`s comprehensive Primary Health Care program for the community in Bodhgaya. APC has been providing regular Mother and Childcare services since October 2015 under the same program free of charge.
According to the Ward Councilor of Mastipur, dental hygiene and awareness is almost next to none in the community and thus she really appreciated the service that APC trying to provide her community and promised to give all her support to APC. The Ward councilor has been a supporter of APC and it`s staff from the beginning.
In order to manage the limited time of 2.5 hours of the visiting Dentist, APC pre-register the patients a few days earlier. Though 25 registered for the service, we had 18 patients today. Except 2, all patients were female. Usually in the community men do not seems to seek the help of a doctor unless in case of real emergency. Also the fact that men go for labour work in the morning we had less male patients.
There were 2 children under 12 years of age also benefitted from the service today. The dentist provided regular checkup and extraction today and scheduled some more filling and extraction for the next clinic. Almost all patients had pain due to tooth decay. However all of them did not want their teeth removed even though the dentist explained the necessity to do so. They only want medication to subdue the pain.