Page 13 - ICD Newsletter November 2021 Final Draft_Neat
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DENTAL TEAMS FOR has finally arrived at the Melbourne depot. Now we
TONGA DENTAL HEALTH can start to pack our accumulated Tonga donations
into it. We are working towards having it ready for
shipping by Christmas if possible, so there’s lots of
Project Overview – Plans and Objectives 2021-22
work to do in the next few weeks! However, I now
The project will have two major elements this year, have a call to action to spur me on!
1. Purchasing and shipping a 40ft container of The shipping schedules for the Pacific are not yet
mainly dental and medical equipment and supplies available for January/February.Dental Equipment &
Supplies
2. Organising a volunteer dental team for Tonga in
2022
The timing of both will be influenced by Covid-19.
An order has been placed to purchase the container,
but the supplies are scarce. Shipping is also being
affected. Costs are escalating. When volunteers can
visit is also an unknown, but it feels like early next
year may be possible.
The container will carry equipment and supplies for
the following projects:
• New Queen Salote College Dental Clinic
• New Apifo’ou College Dental Clinic
• New Tupou College Dental Clinic I liaise with Tonga dental equipment engineer Mr
• New library at Queen Salote College Sioeli Manu (Uho) regarding the dental equipment
• First aid rooms at Tupou, QSC & Apifo’ou needed for the school clinics (and some outer
• Ministry of Health outer islands islands). I have 9 dental chairs ready to put into the
• Converting the shipping container into an container – 6 A-dec and 3 Midmark, equipment which
Equipment Maintenance Unit, Vaiola Hospital Uho is familiar with. They are reliable units, and spare
parts are available. Also sending five autoclaves and
• OPG machine for the Vaiola Hospital other dental equipment such as A-dec carts for the
The container will be shipped from the DIK West new clinics at Tupou, QSC, Apifo’ou Colleges, and
Footscray Store and a significant amount of dental elsewhere. The autoclaves are older style which
equipment has been accumulated. now can be hard to obtain. These models have been
specifically requested for use in the remote outer
islands of Tonga as the islands experience large
Can You Contribute Supplies? voltage fluctuations which can destroy many modern
We are looking for these items to add to the autoclave motherboards. They are factory validated
container headed for Tonga: to Australian standards, come with spare parts, and
• modern dental textbooks in good condition the Tongan engineer can service and repair these
• secondary school science books autoclaves. I am expecting a digital OPG radiology
• dental surgical instruments (forceps, elevators) machine to arrive next week and this will be ideal
• LA syringes for replacing the existing broken one at the main
• an Apex locator hospital.
• Equipment with a minimum of 5 years of
working life left and spare parts readily I will be meeting with Australian dental equipment
available engineers Cale Ziola and Peter Copp on Monday,
Contact David at dgold@vic.chariot.net.au November 15th to evaluate the equipment before we
send it and ensure it is suitable for Tongan conditions;
both have Tongan dental equipment experience. We
Progress Report may need to purchase more dental equipment if we
I am pleased to report that our shipping container are short on their wish list.
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