Dentist Helps Cambodia Develop Oral Health Plan

Dr. Martin Hobdell, chairman of the dental public health and dental hygiene department at The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston, is donating his time and expertise to help the embattled country of Cambodia plan a national oral health strategy.

Dr. Hobdell, who has volunteered in numerous remote regions throughout his career, will travel to Cambodia to help formulate a five-year plan designed to deal with Cambodia's staggering health problems, at the request of the Cambodian government. Cambodia is gradually emerging from three decades of civil war, foreign invasion and mass political executions, which took their toll on the health of the country's surviving people.

"Pol Pot, the communist Khmer Rouge leader, killed all of the trained oral health physicians who did not escape the country in the 1970s," Dr. Hobdell said, "so Cambodians have not received any kind of regular oral health care or information."

As a result, Cambodians are afflicted with large numbers of cavities from inadequate cleaning and a lack of fluoride, he explained.

"Rampant smoking and alcohol consumption by the urban population is leading to high incidences of oral cancers and periodontal disease," Dr. Hobdell added. "HIV and AIDS also are becoming epidemic among the more than 12 million people living in Cambodia," he said.

"AIDS is spreading very quickly throughout the population and, in fact, across all of Southeast Asia. HIV often causes a malady called `thrush,' an oral yeast infection that can lead to the inability to talk, eat or even swallow," he said. "Purple or brown lesions in the mouth known as Kaposi's sarcoma can also occur, becoming infected and hard to treat," he added.

Cambodia's public health challenges stretch well beyond oral care, and Dr. Hobdell is only too aware that oral health is relatively low on the government's priority list.

"But the maladies associated with oral health can lead to even worse problems if left untreated," he said. "The Cambodian government knows this, and that is why we are determined to design a workable program for the country."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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