A Busy Week on the Survey

Last week I was with a survey team going to villages around Efate Island outside of Port Vila. But we started the week with a clinic day for the worst cases we had seen the previous week. The PCV Health clinic was all cleaned and made ready last week, and dentists Anne and Virginia did fillings and/or extractions for approx 20 people, assisted by dental assistants Hannah and Maddie, all from Australia. Dentist David Goldsmith, Sarafina and I did surveys on some people while they were waiting. 

Here is Virginia working with Maddie.

 Virginia with a very happy young patient who had her front teeth filled so now she can be proud of her smile and not risk losing her front teeth to decay.

 Out at Eton Village we had curious onlookers. Here is David and Hannah working.

 Eton is right on the coast (this is near where Tony and Mary have taken Martyn and me for swims).

 Dentist Amy and dental assistants Ellie and Chloe arrived this week. here they are getting to grips with survey work with Hannah looking on.

 We spent 2 days at Eton, then went to Onesua, where we set up with military precision! 

 Here are our questionnaire girls Jessica, Marie and Joanne, with Sarafina in the orange T-shirt behind.

 The whole team at Onesua: Barry our team leader, Sarafina, me, Virginia, Ellie, Otto our bus driver, Chloe, Joanne, Amy, David, Jessica, Marie, Hannah, Anne. Sarafina and Barry both work full-time for PCV Health, Joanne, Jessica and Marie are local volunteers for the survey, all others are volunteers from Australia.

We also visited Manua School and Paunangisu Village. We had a wonderful week meeting and talking with many lovely people. We didn't achieve our targets for the survey though - it is difficult to find enough people in the villages during the day as some go in to Port Vila to work and others go to the communal gardens to work.
We traveled by bus each day from Port Vila, sometimes needing 2 buses to carry all the people and all the folding tables, chairs and other equipment. Eton is on the lower right, Onesua upper right, Paunangisu at the top.