Dental-Care Challenge: Open Wider

Prince George's County provides dental care to uninsured pregnant women and children at two sites: the Cheverly Health Center, across the street from Prince George's Hospital Center, and a school-based clinic in Oxon Hill. A third site, in Suitland, is scheduled to open in May.

On a recent Monday morning, the waiting room at Cheverly was about three-quarters full. Danya Gordon, a case manager, said one of the center's major issues is the "lack of availability of the parents" because of schedule conflicts.

Nine-year-old Abdul Kamara of Cheverly was cavity-free in a dental checkup at the center early last week and returned a few days later to get a chip on his front tooth repaired. "You've been brushing very well," dentist Debony Hughes told him. Memunatu Kamara, the boy's mother, said the family learned about the clinic through another part of the health center.

Hughes said the clinic's biggest challenge is to educate parents on the importance of dental care for children. "There needs to be more outreach," she said, "because if the parent doesn't know, then of course, the child won't know."

She said she often hears from parents how hard it is for them to afford care or find dentists who accept Medicaid. "Dental is not a priority" when patients are struggling to make ends meet, she said, and "it's very expensive to have to go and pay out of pocket."

The Northern Virginia clinic, open to low-income people, drew medical and community volunteers -- as well as many grateful patients. Wendy Galloway, 54, a Dumfries resident who doesn't have dental insurance, came in about a tooth that she said had been "bothering me a while. But it started hurting real, real bad about three weeks ago." A dentist who had volunteered to help staff the clinic pulled the tooth.

Most patients who visited the clinic had cavities; some needed extractions, organizers of the event said. "We are doing a lot of root canals," said Alonzo Bell, an Alexandria dentist who worked at the event.

Margaret Basil, 70, who hadn't been to a dentist in three years, was glad she had come to the clinic. "I have a wisdom tooth at age 70. Can you believe that?" said the Loudoun County resident, who doesn't have dental insurance. Basil said she thought all of her wisdom teeth had been removed many years ago.

Offering dental care to the poor has become a priority for the Health Resources and Services Administration, which provides funding to federally qualified health centers. About 73 percent of them offer dental care on-site, said Elizabeth M. Duke, administrator of the agency, which funds seven centers in the Washington area.

Although delayed dental care only rarely leads to death, as in Driver's case, it can cause severe problems.

Hughes saw a child about eight years ago who had a "humongous tumor" that encompassed half of his lower jaw. It probably had been growing there for some time, she said. The clinic spotted the benign tumor on an X-ray and referred the boy to the University of Maryland Dental School for treatment.

The Cheverly clinic also sometimes sees "extreme cases where [children] have to have total mouth rehabilitation, all the upper and lower teeth are decayed, and all you can do is extract," Hughes said. "There have been cases where we've had to take out the majority of a child's teeth." For such extensive care, patients are sent to Children's Hospital or the dental schools at the University of Maryland and Howard University. ·

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