No toothless smiles for Ukrainians!
Organizers of the Quality of Life for Parents campaign strive to keep Ukrainians’s teeth intact
Half of 25-year-old Ukrainians have lost at least one tooth; by the age of 65 half of Ukrainians are completely toothless, and all of them become completely toothless before their 85th anniversary. These figures, appalling as they are for the 20th century, were reported by the Ukrainian Association of Implantologists.
At the Western Regional Military Medical Clinical Centre, which is situated in Lviv at the Lychakivska Street 26, a group of 80 leading dentist volunteers (all of whom were members of the Ukrainian Association of Implantologists and the Ukrainian Association of Private Dentists) conducted free dental implant surgeries for veterans of the Great Patriotic War for one day. The project is supported by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defence.
“Life without teeth is a daily misery!” told The Day the head of the Association of Implantologists and the campaign’s initiator Yaroslav Zablotsky. “Today we take veterans into our care; the campaign ‘Quality of Life for Parents’ is for us, dentists and implantologists, an ambitious task, an example of social responsibility and civic stance. We want to change the attitude of the authorities to toothless people, in order to get them to have government assistance in obtaining modern prosthetics.”
Veterans got four implants installed in the lower jaw and stationary structure, which are called artificial teeth. Doctors stress that implant installation is no more traumatic than removing a tooth.
Given that the elderly people in need of prosthetics had somatic diseases as well, they were previously hospitalized so as to allow them to undergo medical examination and, if necessary, treatment. All those operated will stay in the hospital for five days, and after discharge they will be cared for by private dental clinics. According to head of the Ukrainian Association of Private Dentists Myron Uhryn, prosthetics users will remain under medical supervision for the two next years. The supervisors will be the same doctors who installed implants for the patient in question.
The All-Ukrainian campaign Quality of Life for Parents is an initiative of the Ukrainian Association of Implantologists acting in conjunction with the Ukrainian Association of Private Dentists; during the campaign dentists have already installed 426 free implants for 87 veterans of WWII. The oldest patient was 93 years old. The costs of prosthetics were paid for by public and private clinics and dental laboratories.
This year the campaign events have taken place in Odesa, Kyiv and Simferopol. By the end of 2010, such projects should be carried out in Kharkiv and Sevastopol — the latter will host the first joint international project of the campaign, which will take place at the facilities of two hospitals belonging to the Black Sea Fleets of Ukraine and Russia, with both Ukrainian and Russian specialists participating. In the near term, the organizers promise to cover all regional centers of Ukraine with such events.
The initiative of Ukrainian implantologists has found the support of colleagues around the world. In particular, international observers from Russia, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Israel and Serbia will join the campaign to learn from their experience, with view to undertaking similar campaigns in their own countries. In 2012, implantologists from 19 countries plan to hold such an event simultaneously, via teleconference, in the capitals of the countries-participants of the World War II.
