National Oral Health Survey
I had my first session on a new project for me to be involved with. This survey is being done across the whole country for the first time, to see what the state of the nation's teeth are like. It is a government initiative that PCV Dental are co-coordinating, but a few other clinics around the country and some overseas groups are also involved. It's a big job to get a random sample of 3,000 people surveyed (approx 1% of the population), and will take several months, not including analysing the data and writing up the report afterwards. Dental teams are coming from NZ and Aus to do the inspections and also a few local dentists. Other local people are required to help people fill out a questionnaire, and to record what the dentists are seeing in people's mouths. I will be one of the recorders.

 I had my first training session with some other volunteer recorders this morning, learning about how each tooth is numbered, and what all the different surfaces of each tooth are called, so that we can understand what the dentists are telling us.
This is Debra Allen (Deb), an Aussie volunteer with PCV Dental and Eye Clinic, who was training us. Unfortunately Mr Colgate lost a few teeth during the demonstration. Hope that doesn't happen to any live participants 😱

We have another training session in a couple of weeks, then the first team goes out around Efate in mid-July, doing day-trips from Vila. In mid-August a team will go to the small islands just north of Efate and I hope to go to some of those, depending on when we have to leave to get to General Assembly on Santo on time.