In my last two articles, I just shared few moments of the first 2 days of the conference, and I promised to give a summary of the full conference and decisions taken from the conference.

The conference was organized by Rwanda Dental surgeons associations together with Rwanda medical and dental council and different sponsors including the ministry of health.

The conference started on June 8th 2018 and ended on 9th June 2018.

The theme for this conference was " Prevention of oral diseases and tooth loss ".
Different countries were represented by deans and professors of different dental institutions. Most represented were African countries.

Countries represented were: Belgium, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, RDC, Senegal, Benin, Rwanda and Uganda even though there were doctors from different countries like USA, Mexico, India, Tanzania, and Greece working in the University of Rwanda and different institutions in Rwanda.

The plan was to talk about different challenges that African oral health is facing and look for solutions, share experiences and knowledge in dentistry. Among the challenges were:

• Insufficient access to oral health services due to resource constraints at individual and national levels.
• Oral health is not considered as a priority in many African health sectors.
• Lack of Human and material resources.

Day 1

This was at Kigali conference and exhibition village. After a welcome speech from

Dr. Adelaide MUHIGANA the president of Rwanda dental surgeons association we got opening speeches from:

1. Dr. Emmanuel Muvunyi,

   
   
   the Executive Director of the Higher Education Council of Rwanda, on behalf of ministry of education.

2. Dr Emmanuel Rudakemwa,

   
   
   the chairman of Rwanda medical and dental council who was also there on behalf of ministry of health.
   And

3. Professor KOFFI-GNAGNE Yolande,

   
   Dean of the Dental School of Abidjan, University Felix Houphouet Boigny in Cote d'Ivoire and a member of the scientific commission of the international Francophone Deans’ conference CID-CDF (conférence Internationale des Doyens des Facultés Dentaires d’expression Française) on behalf of World Dental Federation (FDI).

After opening speeches we got presentations from different deans, doctors, and professors,

Professor Charles Pilipili from Belgium, vice dean of the faculty of medicine and dental medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain.

He showed us some statistics about how most of the African countries are not prioritizing oral health and the way it is affecting the African economy.
He also presented some reasons why governments are not prioritizing oral health, one of them was that raising a dental student is too expensive equivalent to raising 5 medical students if I remember well.

Next, to that professor, CHEIKH MOUHAMADOU MBAKÉ Lô explained the role of oral health as a factor of socioeconomic development. Oral health is as import as general health and has the same impact to the well being of the population.

Dr. Eleane Stoufi oral medicine specialist from Greece, visiting lecturer at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Associate Professor Dental School University of Rwanda talked about how infectious, neoplasms and systemic diseases manifest in the oral cavity. She also mentioned a role of a dental surgeon in early diagnosis of those diseases.

We took pictures together as attendees and had a lunch together.

Here I was on the same table (me in white) with these doctors from RDC.

Then after lunch, we got other presentations, and this one from Dr. Sammy Noumbissi was very interesting.

Dr. Sammy is the Academic Director of Miles of Smiles Institute and President of International Academy of Ceramic Implantology.

He was talking about advances in dental Implantology showing how ceramic and metal free implants are going to solve clinical challenges due to metal implants.

Day 2

Day 2 was at Hôtel de Mille Collines.

As usual, we had different presentations. The one that inspired a lot of people was from Dr. Amol sharing his experience while working in East Africa.

Dr. Amol S. Kulkarni is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon working at Rwanda military hospital. He worked in the different area of East Africa like Tanzania, Rwanda as well.

He shared some of the cases he managed in hospitals with limited instruments and materials.

Some of his patients were considered to be witches in their communities because of the oral and maxillofacial carcinomas and cysts.

That is the tongue you're seeing. That girl was suffering from squamous cell carcinoma but she was managing to eat hardly.

Dr. Amol said how all of what he was doing was his passion and a will to help
He proved that by just telling us how small was the salary he was getting.

We got another presentation by Dr. Margaret Wandera from our neighbor Uganda. She was talking about phasing down the use of Dental Amalgam.

Dental Amalgam is an alloy containing mercury. Free mercury is harmful when you breathe it. She also to talked about UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) article of August 2017. She told us that Rwanda and Uganda are among the countries that signed that treaty.

Dr. Isyagi Moses from Uganda and Dr. Achille BIZIMANA both were in an organizing committee of the event.

They revealed some statistics about oral diseases in Rwanda where they showed us that oral diseases like dental caries and periodontal diseases are amongst the 4 most reported cases of diseases (including malaria, flu.....).

This is the challenge to Rwandans, dental surgeons, to all oral health professionals and we have to look for solutions together.

We got also a presentation from the graduating student NSHIMIYIMANA Joseph presenting the tool for self-diagnosing (screening) of oral cancer.

Recommendations from the conference:

1. Accelerate the recruitment of the sufficient number of dental surgeons and hygienist in charge of prevention.
2. Develop the cooperation among the countries through professional associations and university institutions.
3. Reinforce the quality of initial training of dental surgeons and encourage continuing education.
4. Work on integration of oral health in different programs of our country according to the WHO recommendations.
5. Sensibilise financial partnership, including international financial partners for financing necessary to training, establishment, and operation of our oral health system.

Thank you for your time reading!

By Jado

@bmotives

SHALOM!