DT News - Canada - Sonu Sharma, DDS: Doing well by doing good

Robert Selleck, Dental Tribune Canada

Wed. 16 April 2014

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Sonu Sharma, DDS, thought so highly of the dental brigade trip he took to Uganda in 2012, he now serves on the sponsoring organization’s board of directors. Sharma, a partner in two dental practices in Leduc, Alberta, went deep into Uganda’s Kabale region, where 2 million people are normally served by just two dentists.

“There is tremendous need in the areas we serve,” Sharma said. “We are limited in what we can do, so mostly it’s removing infected teeth and relieving people of pain they’ve been living with. We see a lot of caries, and there is a desperate need for oral hygiene education. That’s becoming an increasingly important component of these brigades as we realize education is the best way to have the greatest positive impact.”

Sharma took a couple of trips with other groups years earlier. But it was his Change for Children experience that inspired his now annual commitment — and compelled him to join the Edmonton-based organization’s board.

This year he went on a Change for Children brigade to the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua, another vast, isolated region, where 55,000 indigenous people have no permanent health-care services. During the 11-day trip, 19 volunteers, mostly from Alberta, set up temporary clinics in five different communities, traveling by boat on the Rio Coco — working all day and sleeping in hammocks at night. The hygienists, assistants, four dentists and support crew together served about 500 patients.

Change for Children supports a broad range of sustainable community development projects in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. Its dental brigades, many held in partnership with Kindness in Action, represent one component of that support.

“The work is incredibly gratifying,” Sharma said. “There is almost no better feeling than helping somebody just for the sake of doing so.”

Already on Sharma’s calendar in 2014: Bolivia.

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