Features
Engineers Want to Put Smiles on Faces of Kids in Caribbean
Students design two dental clinics on wheels
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Bright smiles in the Dominican Republic may reflect the efforts of a Guelph engineering class whose assignment this year is to design two much-needed mobile dental clinics for the poor Caribbean island country. Students in a senior design course taught by Prof. John Runciman hope their class project will yield not just an “A” but also improved dental care for kids and families in the developing nation.
The unique project is a bonus for Runciman, too. “One of the reasons I got into this form of engineering was to help people,” he says. Last spring, he had another student group design a bicycle brake for a girl with a disabled hand.
This time, all 25 students in his fourth-year biomechanical design class are helping to revamp and outfit two donated cube vans for use in communities in the Dominican Republic that lack dental health services.
“People from these communities typically travel to see a dentist only for extremely severe infections or disease,” says Alex Vistorino, a 2004 biological engineering graduate from Thunder Bay who is now executive director of the Smiles Foundation in Santo Domingo, the capital.
Lacking proper dental hygiene — and without public dental health care or education — more than nine out of 10 people in this nine-million-strong nation have cavities requiring fillings, says Vistorino. The problem is especially acute among children aged six to 14. About 95 per cent of the population suffers from periodontal disease.
The Smiles Foundation already operates eight permanent clinics and plans to add two more next year. It also runs three mobile clinics and hopes to add these two new clinics-on-wheels by next spring, he says.
“The main benefit of these vans is that they're completely mobile and can be moved to remote underserviced communities where dental health services are non-existent. Our main target population is children, but we also treat adults, and typically whole families come to the van for treatment all at the same time.”
Two used vans were donated this year by a Toronto-area Rotary Club. Already shipped south, they will be outfitted by local contractors and an on-site dental technician, following design specs to be supplied by the Guelph students.
Here at U of G, groups of students are tackling components of the complicated project, from space allocation and specifications for air conditioning, electricity, lighting, water and compressed air to requisite dental equipment and tools — even a waste-disposal system. They're communicating with their Caribbean partners by conference call and e-mail.
The Smiles Foundation aims to raise funds to complete the project. “The students' report will be used by the charitable organization to submit a grant application to finish these trucks,” says Runciman.
He got involved after Vistorino contacted him to ask for a reference letter and mentioned the project.
Runciman thought the project sounded perfect for his design course because it's an applied real-life problem. “It's not that different from what grads have done,” he says, referring to hospital design problems encountered by other engineering graduates.
Student Leanne Conrad says she likes being involved in something that's not just theoretical. “I really want it to be well done. It's going to affect many people who use the service.”
Adds team member Willy De Witt: “There's a little more pride involved.”