Clinica Caris Dental Grand Opening

The cutting of the ribbon - which we did not have so we used a plastic bag.

As mentioned in the previous post Thanksgiving day marked the grand opening of the dental clinic at Clinica Caris with Marcos and Mauri, the new dental assistant. Mauri is from Chichicastenango and recently finished high school with a diploma as a bookkeeper. So, not exactly a background in dental; however, we will put her bookkeeping skills and computer skills to use as well.

The actual cut!

Our plastic bag bow.


In action with patient number 2, Everaldo Chan Tevelan.

Right now with our dental services we are working examining and providing treatments to all of the children in the ABC program and we are slowly opening up the clinic to other patients as well. Our process includes going to the community first to exam the children, provided teeth cleanings or extractions for those needing and then programming the children for extra care to be provided by Marcos at Clinica Caris. So far we have visited Xepocol and Paxot 2. We head to Paxot 2 again today to finish the children there and then next week we head to La Palma and the following week, Mactzul V. For Mactzul V we will have to visit the community 3 days to get to all of the children - around 60.

Gaspar and Tomas, our health promoters, have also started the service of providing teeth cleanings and Gaspar now has about 20-30 under his belt. Yesterday he had 10 patients in Panajchit which is a clinic in Josefina's rotation.

Here is a picture of all of our promoters now - from left to right Mauri, Juan, Tomas, Gaspar, and Manuel. This was during the dental clinic in Xepocol where Mauri and Tomas were dental assistants, Gaspar Dental Hygienist, Manuel Gaspar's assistant and Juan was the dental tech, cleaning instruments. That left me and Sheri with sign-in, vital signs and pharmacy and Josefina seeing medical patients. All in all a good day. We had over 20 patients medical and over 20 dental.