If everything were a question of numbers it could be summarized like this: 8 places visited, 6 trips to each of them since 2010, 865 patients treated, 100 prostheses installed, 20,900 kilometers traveled in all this time, 20 teachers from the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Río Negro and 200 studentss of the career committed to “Lic. Pearl Brevi. Another program on everyone’s lips,” which started fourteen years ago.
But it’s not just a question of numbers. And then, the image could be the one told by Pedro Muzevic, one of the professors and those responsible for the extension program of the Faculty of Dentistry of the National University of Río Negro (UNRN), who this weekend made his last trip, this go to El Cuy again, because the budget does not allow for more.
The image is like this: “I went on a trip for the first time with this extension program in 2016, to Aguada Guzmán. I had to follow Valentina as a teacher, a student who at that time was in her third year of college and who had already gone on other trips. The student had initiated attention with José, a very introverted, very tender country man. But on this particular trip he had to get a prosthesis and since she was in her third year, the prosthesis was not within her competence. Then, I hear her tell a colleague to let her know when they give José the prosthesis because she wanted to be present and greet him. She cared not only about her work but about José’s total rehabilitation. When they told her, she came down. And there was José, greeting us all. He told us all that he couldn’t believe that he was going to get new teeth at school. For them, the school is the center of everything, the social center. We all got excited along with him. And then, I see that Valentina comes out crying and I follow her to tell her not to worry, that we were all excited. That moment was crucial for me. There I saw the true value of extension, situated practice, how rich it is for students and for us, teachers and professionals. That’s why I fell in love with this program and have never missed it, since that day. That image of José and Valentina was very strong for me. I fell in love with that event. I told myself: this is where you have to be. This is the live university and what the public university produces. Now, the situation forces us to stop”laments Pedro Muzevic.
This university extension project took fourteen years, many kilometers, and above all, a lot of will and loyalty. The germ was born in 2010, when dentists and professors Víctor Brion, Mónica Zanchin, and Perla Brevi got into a van with a student from the UNRN program and left for the southern line without suspecting that they were opening a road of round trip that would connect more and more people and more places. That project had fundamental support in 2015: the first mobile clinic, which allowed them until last weekend to provide care with all the luxuries. The mobile office is everyone’s pride: it has two spaces with X-rays, lathes and even hot/cold equipment, and it travels with them to each of these destinations.
In addition to the professors, the dentistry team is a group made up of students – most of them four months after graduating – and assistants. An average of twenty-four people in total.
Since its beginning they have spent weekends in Aguada Guzmán, Lipetren Chico y Grande, Río Chico, Colan Conhue, Prahuaniyeu, and have made more than ten trips to El Cuy, where once they announced the date they would be there, Patients arrived from Naupa Huen, Cerro Policia, Aguada Guzmán, Mencué and Blancura Centro. The place where they served was the El Cuy Hospital, which, opened very recently, had a dental office set up, but it did not have a specialist.
Details that make the difference
There are people on the team who have gone to all destinations and who never gave up on this kind of crusade to bring oral health to places where there is no care.
These are weekends dedicated to serving, learning, getting to know corners of the province where there are no dentists, and its people, who in many cases had never seen a dentist in their lives.
To participate, the entire team gathered at 6 in the morning in Allen and a little later at the Roca roundabout (on Route 6) and, when everyone was there, they got into a van, or into the teachers’ private vans. and they left for their destination. In all cases, they were learning trips, and they were not comfortable, although everyone had a good time. They brought a little food, they carried their sleeping bags and when they arrived they settled where those who received them graciously arranged: sometimes it was in shelter schools, other times in the classrooms of a school.
In addition, they had to take down all the dental equipment, prepare the classrooms or offices that were in the place, put on the cap, the mask and the ambo and start the day to attend to the patients who had already been warned and those who fell unexpectedly with some pain. .
Alejandra Zambrana, who works at the UNRN Allen School of Dentistry Hospital and is in charge of the biosafety area, did not miss a trip, and was one of the enthusiasts who recommended to the students that they do not miss going: “they always I tell the kids: Don’t miss it because what you learn here you can’t learn anywhere.”
On Saturdays, they worked non-stop. From 2 p.m., when everything was already set up, until 9 p.m., they treated between 40 and 60 patients. On Sundays, they started very early, at the same time, before disassembling everything they had set up to return to their homes.
When they arrived at the most remote places and stayed in the hostel schools, they only started their return on Monday, to make the trip more profitable.
Again the numbers, with an example: before the UNRN dentistry team began to go, for example to El Cuy, in 2021, at the rate of one weekend every two months, there were 150 consultations for dental emergencies per day. year in the Hospital of that Rio Negro town. By 2023 they had dropped to 25.
Reducing visits from 150 to 25 also implies fewer antibiotics, which are often given because it is the only thing that can be done.
For the El Cuy Hospital, these visits also represented another advantage. Before the team visited them every two months, they had to manage shifts and accompany the patients to Roca for care, which required a total of eight hours.
Carolina Alcázar participated in the program almost from the beginning. She started it as a student and now, until this weekend, she was part of the program as a teacher.
“I feel anguish, anger. We were very sad the entire week before the trip because we were planning what was going to be our last trip, without knowing when we were going to return, prioritizing leaving people as cared for and comfortable as possible, with the idea of resolving emergencies, and explaining to them to students that the program was being cut until further notice. The truth is that this is a program that has been running for many years, that has traveled through many places, that has generated a very positive impact on both the communities and the students of the program, and on the teachers. It is a program that works. The need for dental care on the Southern Line is incredible. and we, from our contribution, try to reach the community, and that the students reach it. Putting an end to it due to lack of funds is very sad. All this work is done by force of will, it is ad honorem on the part of the teachers, it is due to the efforts that the students put into it, all of that is what sustains this program. “This is the first time it has happened to us: having to stop a program because there is no more money,” says Carolina, already graduated from the program and defender of the program.
Carolina gives another example: “on this last trip we had started a prosthesis that is still missing. A dental technician travels with us who gives us a huge hand and since we do not have a return date to El Cuy, both the technician and one of the teachers offered to coordinate with the nurse and the patient, who lives in Cerro Policia, to travel and be able to fit the prosthesis. This shows the will of the community, the nurse and the teachers to find a solution for this.“, says.
For those who came up with this program, that kind of commitment and teaching is the best reward. That, and knowing that there are students who went to study dentistry from Los Menucos, or Maquinchao, and who today are in their towns, attending. “That there is a University in our province, that people from the interior of the province come to study Allen and then return to their places is essential. We believe that you study in a different way, you learn in a different way and being from that place, they give other support to the people,” Zanchín told this newspaper on the trip that took place last year, also to The guinea pig.
For most of the teachers who are part of it, the extension program was a way not only to do internships – they can do that at the Allen Teaching Hospital – but to do them in corners far from the comfort of cities and offices, knowing the reality of the province and its inhabitants, their customs, their ways of dealing with pain. For the majority of the students who participated as well. In a video that Pedro Muzevic recorded during the return trip, Ingrid, a final year student, sums it up like this: “This program is an investment, it trains us, it gives us quality of care. It gives us a sociocultural context that many times on a daily basis, in the hustle and bustle, we forget how important it is for people who cannot access it to provide quality care. Beyond dental practice, love, caring about them. We are not going to keep time in practice. We go because we feel it, because we feel like it, because we like it. It is an investment”.
