A visit of the clinic?

Emergencies coming a long way

At 9 am, the first patients, emergencies, are taking seats on our chairs. The wait can be long as most of them arrived at the clinic around 6-7 am! For some of them, they have traveled 2-3 days to arrive to Monrovia, where they have to find a place to stay during the treatment (at family or friends house). Archie and Daniel are two students who work a few days a week at the clinic, they are able to manage simple extractions. It is very precious to have them and we continue to train them! Mathilda has done a 6 month training in India (no dental school in Liberia!). She can even take care of small cavities.

Larges infections

A lot of patients are coming with large infections: the bone is infected and the abscess is such that a "natural" drainage is created outside of the cheek. Generally, when Melvina asks them for how long they have been in this situation, the answer varies between 5 to 8 months! Treating such infections is really really difficult. The patients have to take antibiotics for weeks and have to come once or twice a week for a check-up. However once a treatment is successful, it is very encouraging to see how grateful the patients are!

The afternoons are dedicated to treatments such as fillings, root canal treatments and follows up (we can even make small dentures!).

Melvina has often the feeling to be out of her comfort zone. Fortunately, Simon, her British dentist colleague is teaching her a lot and can help her in difficult situations.

Little bit's

• An extraction costs around 4$ and the follow up is generally free of charge.
• Gabriel is crawling and looooves to go to the bathroom to empty the trash bin! Watch out, close the door!
• Melvina is a relatively common name in Liberia. Somebody even asked her: "Why do you have a Liberian name?"
• Every lunch, we eat rice! We offer our security guards one plate a day… 25 kg of rice where consumed in one month and a half ;)
• Théotime and Siméon have caught their first fish in the swamp behind our house :-D

Best wishes to all, here the rainy season is soon over and we will learn what it is to be "reaaallly hot"!

Melvina, Nicolas, Théotime, Siméon and Gabriel