Couple bring smiles to Africa

A couple from Horrabridge have been spreading smiles to villagers in Africa by volunteering with a dental charity.

Lee Spencer, the one-legged rowing Royal Marine, and his wife Claire, have been helping the Devon-based SmileStar charity hold dental clinics in the most deprived areas of Uganda.

The couple became involved with the charity after meeting its founder dentist Dr Mitesh Badiani when he was treating Royal Marines as part of their rehabilitation.

Lee, who had a leg amputated after he was hurt helping a casualty in a traffic accident, has spent years since he left the Royal Marines supporting sick and injured troops.

During this work he met Mitesh, who works at Ashburton, Tavistock and Plymouth practices, who invited him and Claire to see his teams at work in temporary outreach clinics.

Lee said: “Mitesh is a star. He has been doing wonderful work giving up his time with discharged sick and wounded Royal Marines as part of their rehab with the Royal Marines Charity, and that’s when I met him. He asked Claire and me if we wanted to come out to Uganda and give practical help.

“Mitesh set up SmileStar to provide high quality dental care to deprived communities in Uganda, Kenya, India and Tanzania. He and other dentists work with support teams providing villagers and others living in remote areas with relief from dental pain.

“Obviously me and Claire are not dental professionals, but we were soon up to speed on our roles. Claire did dental instrument sterilisation and I supported the dentists with patient care.

“I helped the dentist while they worked on patients in the chair. I was able to reassure and comfort them, hold their hands if needed and hold and hand out instruments and other equipment.

“I’ve helped over the years with rehabilitation of service personnel and been through pain myself, but there was nothing so rewarding as seeing people from poor backgrounds being relieved of pain through simple procedures that we all take for granted.

“Some had been living with varying degrees of tooth ache for several years, but had no treatment because they didn’t have access to dental care.”

The couple went to communities many miles apart and they and their team were met with crowds of villagers needing urgent treatment by Ugandan and UK dentists free of charge.

Claire said: “I was happy to be in the background in the sterilisation team. We cleaned instruments and other equipment and then put them in pressure cookers to make them as sterile as possible for reuse by dentists.

“It was so rewarding and we’d both go back again. People walked miles to get treatment. Everyone was so grateful.”

The couple also came up close to gorillas on their visit as part of a safari (first made famous by David Attenborough). Lee said: “Ever since I was young I was obsessed with wildlife, so it was a big thrill to have gorilla brush past me. But helping these deprived people even surpassed that.”