DENTAL SCHOOL? WE DON' NEED NO STEEKIN' DENTAL SCHOOL!
<|:)~Posted on 08/19/2002 7:09:26 PM PDT by swarthyguy
LAHORE, Pakistan Mohammed Aslam uses pliers, wire cutters and a metal file on the mouths of patients he treats in a dusty public park stinking of urine.
Mohammed Ishaq Khan, a fellow practitioner, believes that toothaches have nothing to do with teeth. "If there is something wrong with someone's teeth, I can instantly know there is something wrong with the digestive system," he explained.
Mohammed Jameel received his training on the street. He has never gone to school and is illiterate. "I learned it in Karachi from a Chinese guy," he said. "I was 10 years old when I started."
The three men are among thousands of street dentists who provide crude dental care to tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of pitiable patients a year in the avenues, parks and trains of Pakistan. Excruciating to watch in action, they chop cavities off live teeth, insert metal wire into the center of dead ones and use metal files to shave down false teeth that have been inserted into patient's mouths.
"I indulge them in conversation and when they are distracted I use this," Khan said, hoisting a metal probe with a razor edge. "Pain only goes away with pain."
The legions of street dentists here are a testament to Pakistanis' high pain thresholds and desperate poverty. Nearly a third of Pakistan's 140 million people live below the international poverty line, and earn less than $37 a month. Having a false tooth inserted by a licensed dentist can cost $40.
"I can't afford it," explained Mohammed Sajjad, a factory worker who recently asked Jameel to repair a front tooth damaged in a fight two and a half years ago. The pain, he explained, had started to bother him.
As Sajjad sat on a small stool on a pedestrian footbridge over a set of railway tracks, Jameel pried out brown chunks of dead tooth and flicked them onto the red plastic tarp spread out under the stool. At one point, the amateur dentist lit up a cigarette to smoke as he worked. At another point, a locomotive passed under the bridge, belching black diesel smoke onto the instruments and into the patient's mouth.
The factory worker showed no sign of discomfort as Jameel filed down his false tooth. He did not even complain when his gums started bleeding. Throughout the ordeal, he only winced twice. Afterward, he admired his new tooth in a small hand-held mirror and thanked his dentist. "I came here a year ago" for work on another tooth, he said. "It's good quality."
Pakistani health officials say they have tried to force the dentists off the street, but the demand for their services is too great. "It happens across the subcontinent," said Dr. M. Rashid Anjum, assistant secretary of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, a regulatory group. "It's the poorest people usually."
Hygiene also appeared to be spotty. Jameel worked with bare hands.
When blood from the factory worker's gums ran onto his hands, he just wiped it off with a cloth. He and other street dentists said they constantly clean their instruments - in a form of locally distilled moonshine.
Novel medical theories abound. Khan, the dentist who said that toothaches are caused by digestive problems, went on to say that brushing your teeth is harmful because it damages your gums. The smooth-talking 54-year-old said it is better to use your finger and an herbal medicine he sells.
"The medicine we give has such a sweet fragrance that they can go to any party and they won't have bad breath," he said, thrusting a pungent concoction that smelled like nail polish and peppermint under a visitor's nose. "You just need two drops."
All had at least a partial set of dentists' tools and used the same type of enamel false teeth as licensed dentists. . Aslam, one of the dentists who worked in the park in Lahore, said outsiders and wealthy doctors may laugh at their work - "the foreigners find it amusing" - but they are helping impoverished people.
Anjum, the regulatory official, agreed. He said he wished that Pakistan had the luxury of eliminating street dentists. But for now they provide dental care that would otherwise be unavailable.
"A Yank in Lahore"
These people have learned a "skill" if that what you want to call it, and have helped people who would not be able to solve their dental problem in a conventional way.
How many western frontiersmen went to get a haircut and some teeth work done before the turn of the century?
In my book, not a whole lot of difference.
These guys probably had networking down to an art form before we strang our first wire on a pole
Not only do I not want these guys working on my teeth, I'm quite sure I don't want them to give me a shave a few feet down from there, either.
:^)
At least they make an effort...
[He] went on to say that brushing your teeth is harmful because it damages your gums.
Probably true, but I'll keep my Oral-B®.
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