01/21/2020
In January 2019, Dr. Little and his wife Liza (pharmacist at Fred Meyer) visited Landrail Point, Crooked Island Bahamas for a vacation and fishing trip. They were accompanied by Bob and Inday Johnson. The local restaurant owner and person responsible for setting up the fly fishing trips is a wonderful lady named Willie Gibson. She asked Dr. Little if he would return again and provide volunteer dentistry, and he agreed. The problem is that there is no dental clinic on the island of roughly 300 people. Dr. Little drew from his Army National Guard experience working with portable dental equipment to come up with a workable solution.
One of the dentists in Dr. Little's National Guard unit put him in touch with Randy Meyer at Caring Hands Worldwide. Their mission is to bring dentistry to under served areas of the world. Randy was the key to making this mission a success due to his donation of an Army surplus portable dental unit. Other donations came from the Johnsons, Suburban Christian Church, some local dentists, and from Dr. Little. Various equipment was shipped to Florida, consolidated, and arrived in Nassau Bahamas on December 12th. Jim Beecroft built an electrical outlet and foot switch to operate the vacuum that was incredibly useful. Craig from Les Schwab donated money to purchase the vacuum.
In the Bahamas Dr. Little worked with Pastor Danhugh Gordon. He is the pastor of the church in Landrail, but also is the lead pastor of a church in Nassau. His organization the South Bahamas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, was instrumental in helping Dr. Little acquire a volunteer dental license and getting the equipment placed on the mail boat to Crooked Island.
Dr. Little needed an assistant, whom he found in his son Sean Little. Having decided to pursue dentistry as a career, Sean had 4 weeks of training to prepare him to be an assistant. He was ably trained by Dr. Little's expert dental assistants Kira and Alisa. Months of gathering supplies and packing 100 pounds of it into suitcases was accomplished by Alisa. One carry on bag was a portable x-ray unit borrowed from the Oregon Army National Guard.
Dr. Little, Sean, and Bob Johnson left Jan. 8th on the red-eye from Portland Oregon to Atlanta and arrived in Nassau Bahamas on the 9th. They flew Saturday morning January 11th to Crooked Island. There are only 2 flights per week, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday. They arrived on Thursday to be sure they wouldn't miss the Saturday flight.
Due to bad weather, the equipment also arrived late on Saturday. All food, equipment, and merchandise has to be ordered from Nassau and brought in on the mail boat. It carries several containers and drops them off at each island. Our equipment was unloaded along with food, bicycles, and everything you can think of.
The local nurse Mrs. Beulah Carol volunteered the use of some of the rooms in the rural medical clinic to set up the dental clinic. A facial massage/tattoo chair was used for a patient chair. A shop vac with foot switch was used for suction. And a pressure cooker on a hot plate was used for sterilization. For this first visit, mostly emergent care was performed, ie. big fillings and extractions.
Many of the people on the island go without dental care because there is no dentist on the island. The nearest dentist is in Nassau which is a $300 flight and requires staying 3 nights. There has not been a dentist on the island in over 6 years, and mostly extractions were performed when the dentist did come. Because of all the dental equipment that is now in Landrail Point, future volunteer dentists from Nassau or from the United States will be able to perform cleanings, fillings, extractions, crowns, and root canals. One thing that is needed is a used Nomad/ Aribex portable x-ray unit, laptop and digital sensor. These 3 items total over $12,000 brand new. Hopefully a used one can be procured at a Government Surplus auction. If you feel like making a donation, please make it to Landrail Point Dental Clinic fund.
