Page 21 - ICD Newsletter November 2022 Final Draft6

• Silver Diamine Fluoride is easy to teach, approach ensures our team interacts directly with
easy to use, less time consuming and easy the community (patients) and provides clinical
to implement in limited resource settings treatment using silver diamine fluoride. This helps
(especially in schools and outreach camps). us demonstrate that the intervention proposed can
• It takes less than 10-12 minutes to complete a be successfully delivered in Timor Leste (not just on
successful application per child. paper but in practice). Additionally, providing the
• Can treat many patients in a single visit service helps us better understand grassroot realities
• Does not require extensive equipment and and evolving needs of the population. Together both
material, hence cheaper when compared to approaches provide Maluk Timor a strong base to
other dental materials increase our advocacy efforts and influence oral
health policy at a health systems level.
Budget: ICD funding from September 2021 and 2022
To read more about this project, CLICK HERE.
Detailed Explanation
Country Context Timor Leste: Project Yeti Has Resumed
Currently, the Timorese Ministry of Health (MOH) after COVID
have registered 18 dentists and 96 dental nurses in
Timor Leste, with an average of one dental nurse Finally, after a prolonged period of travel restrictions
per 13,541 population. Dental nurses are the main due to COVID, it was exciting to return to Nepal in
providers of primary oral health care in Timor Leste, April to resume the work in the clinic.
and they are charged with managing oral disease
in the population. With comprehensive treatment
of dental problems beyond the scope and capacity
of the existing dental health workforce, the MOH
focuses on oral health promotion and the prevention
of oral diseases, while making emergency dental care
available throughout the country.

From a comprehensive list of obstacles/ hindrances
to the population accessing good quality oral health
care in Timor Leste, we identified a major problem
that can be addressed by Maluk Timor. Dental nurses
receive limited professional development and little
ongoing support to enable them to carry the burden
of providing sustained care for the population. While The volunteers were from diverse backgrounds.
other parts of the health sector have received much Atish and Lynne from Queensland quickly settled
more attention, the oral health workforce remains and started in the first week. Gemma from Wales,
underserved. Kalyopy from Texas, Karishma from India and Melinda
from Australia followed on. All the equipment was in
What does our Oral Health Team do: working order except for one aging Statim autoclave.
Maluk Timor’s Oral Health program applies two A Chinese B class autoclave was purchased to add to
approaches to dental caries prevention in Timor Leste the two other autoclaves. I was amazed that all the
(figure 1). Our primary approach involves capacity air and water lines were intact.
building the MOH oral health workforce whereby
fundamentally we are developing competency- There was a huge backlog of dental work. The
based modules and leveraging relationships with monastery accepts new young monks and nuns
MOH to approve these modules. This guarantees every year so there was a lot of work to do. The 8 to
that our modules are accepted by MOH and 10-year-olds who come from backgrounds of poverty
autonomous bodies of MOH as well as the National had a high decay rate in their mixed dentitions. The
Dental Association Timor Leste and other national dental teams were superb with these kids, many of
and international organisations. Our secondary whom were having their first ever dental check.

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