Help for Cambodia

Here at Newbury Smilemakers, we are delighted to have been able to help a third world country's dental and indeed general health in a small way.

We have sent a previously used autoclave to Cambodia via Dentaid, a charity providing dental care in the 3rd world. Even a second-hand one would be worth many hundred's of pounds but more importantly will help save lives and the spread of diseases by improved cross-infection control.

How we been able to do this

As a result of the UK government's recent initiatives on sterilisation for dental practices, along with every other dental practice, we have assessed our own systems. We are delighted to report that on all important aspects, we were well ahead of the game. For example having a separate sterilisation room, which we have had for over 20 years and also state of the art sterilisation equipment, several years ahead of current Government requirements. 

In particular we have had the current gold-standard "vacuum" autoclave for over 5 years, with an additional, non-vacuum machine, kept on stand-by, as a back-up.

In the light of the latest requirements, some months ago, we decommissioned the older, back-up machine and bought a second new vacuum autoclave.
Just over £5000 worth. However the old machine had been regularly serviced and so was in good working order. When the recently voted, dentist of the year, Dr. James Goolnik, made an appeal via facebook, for autoclaves for Cambodia, we responded immediately and thanks to the local Lion's Club in Thatcham, the autoclave has now been collected and will soon be en-route to Cambodia.

More will follow ...