M e m b e r s M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e
With the construction of the library , The Free School , where the children traveled on bicycles to study English , Korean and Japanese , just grew . Siem Reap is a tourist town . The great ruins of Angkor Watt , a UNESCO Heritage Site , are only 10 kilometers ( about 6.2 miles ) away from Siem Reap . The library became the nucleus for children to gather , hang out and even charge their parents ’ cell phones using electricity from the diesel generator . They had a place to sit and read or just thumb through the books . Now they had access to different levels of books and were just fascinated by them . In the summer of 2010 , my two children , Samir , a boy age 19 , and Samira , a girl age 23 , went to Siem Reap and stayed for two months to catalog all the books in the library and volunteer at the Savong Free School . They taught English to the students , and at the Savong Orphanage , dug and maintained fish ponds and duck ponds so the orphans would have a source of protein in their diet .
During that visit , my daughter who had worked with me as a dental assistant in the summers all during her school years , saw the Angkor Hospital for Children ( AHC ) in Siem Reap . This is a nonprofit hospital supported by Friends Without A Border in New York City . She visited the hospital and saw that they had a small dental department treating only children . She was very impressed and saw an opportunity for her Mom ( me ) to contribute to this children ’ s hospital , so she made an appointment with the CEO , Dr . Bill Housworth , to volunteer my expertise at the hospital . I met Dr . Housworth in the summer of 2010 . At that time , my family foundation , The Sumar-Lakhani Foundation , contributed to the physical extension of the dental department and bought equipment for what is now a four-chair dental clinic .
My involvement with the dental department was not only to perform dentistry , but to teach the doctors and dental nurses the way we practice pediatric dentistry in the United States . The norm in the clinic and elsewhere in the Third World countries is “ if the tooth hurts , take it out .” The parents who earn only $ 2 a day cannot afford to come back to the clinic for preventive care or several treatments . So if the tooth is taken out , there is no pain and hence the child does not complain .
I taught the staff at the dental clinic to perform quadrant dentistry . I also taught them to evaluate the oral cavity and look for problem teeth , so that even if the child has not come for that particular tooth , to take care of that tooth because it would be the next tooth hurting and resulting in another visit to the hospital and another day ’ s wages lost for the parents . I taught them to perform pulpotomies rather than extracting the teeth because that tooth had a carious pulpal exposure . On the whole , I taught them to perform restoration , extract roots of primary teeth that were preventing the permanent teeth from erupting properly and to restore teeth rather than extract them .
Once a year , I went to Siem Reap to teach in the clinic for about three weeks . The rest of the year , the staff would consult with me on
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