Stornoway dentist took 10 phantom heads to Cambodia

A dentist from Stornoway has gone to Cambodia with some very unusual hand luggage – 10 handmade heads.

The aid agency that Kenneth Macdonald works there for could not afford so-called phantom heads for dental students to practice on so he made his own.

The one he built for a few pounds proved so popular and cheap compared to the £1,000 ones normally used in developed countries that they ordered as many as he could make.

Kenneth has been visiting Cambodia at least once a year and sometimes more to carry out voluntary work for the One-2-One Charitable Trust. It employs six dental nurses who can do simple extractions and it was recently decided to improve their training to take in simple fillings too.

He said: “We needed what is called a phantom head. Students in this country use them to practice on and for cutting cavities. So I made one of these here. The aim was to replicate the well-tried professional version but with cheaper materials that were easily replaceable.”

A group of Aberdeen students were over in Stornoway recently and were so impressed they said Kenneth’s phantom heads were better at keeping them dry than the one they were using back in Aberdeen.

“We were surprised how effective they were and the dean in Cambodia and asked if he could have 10 of them,” he said. “The moulded head is made out of fibreglass with the plastic container inside it all held together with a metal frame. To make the heads I had to cut 240 bolts to hold them all together. They seem to be working fine.”

Kenneth is now spending several weeks training dental assistants and nurses before heading out to help in some of the region’s most rural areas. He said: “I have been very fortunate in that they have been getting donations from various people and that has helped us to get equipment for some of these areas.”

He described the dire conditions he found in such a poor country as “almost a life-changing experience”. Cambodia, a country about twice the size of Scotland with a population of 13.5 million, was devastated in the 1980s by the regime of the dictator Pol Pot. Intellectuals and professionals were hounded out while the infrastructure of the country was decimated.

“The health professions are very poor. There are a few hospitals in Phnom Penh but at the children’s hospital there is a queue up to 200 yards long every morning – mothers with children waiting to be seen. If you are out in the country, you may get a few tablets from someone but really there is no provision at all.
“Dentistry is even more of a problem. I went up to one Highland area where there is an ethic group who they have their own dialect – a bit like our own Gaelic culture in the islands. There is one nurse for 25,000 people. She has done some dental training so she can extract and clean teeth and that is about it.”

Now responsible for training students and staff as well as making sure they have the right equipment for the few mobile clinics which try and service the rural areas, he explained that about 17 per cent of children in Cambodia live in orphanages.

“That is a huge number. There are many very poor people who cannot otherwise get proper treatment. Often this is done with help from the churches because they have halls and they know people and arrange for us to come and they tell the community that we are going to be there for a week. We also truy and look after prisoners because there is no health provision for them.”

When he is not in Cambodia himself, Kenneth uses online technology to keep in touch with the charity staff.

“Just about every day we speak to each other on Skype and we do training sessions every month using materials which we can share in on-line folders.”

Last week he arranged for trainee nurses at Telford College in Edinburgh to link up with the project in Cambodia so they could see for themselves the work being done there.