Carrefour

Today the team earned its keep. We screened over 1600 children and treatment planned 118 children who required multiple extractions. That's a lot of patients for our eight treatment room dentists to see. And it will equate to about twice the number of extractions that we've done each prior day. 

Carrefour is a very poor town just outside Port au Prince nestled along the coast. On our ride here we past a long fish market and lots of stands selling what looked used clothes. 

Today's patients were rambunctious and lively. When we arrived there were probably 500 children waiting for us in the school courtyard. We snaked our way through the crowd finding our stations and preparing for the onslaught. 

It's now almost 1 pm and 82 children have been seen with another 306 left to be seen. 

In what is now a funny story, a patient a short time ago looked at her extracted tooth, rolled her eyes back and slumped backward on the table. It was her version of humor, but there was nothing funny about it. The team jumped into action dropping what they were doing to respond to the crisis. 

With the crisis averted, we're back on track to climb this seemingly insurmountable mountain of necessary dental work. 

So our final numbers for the day were 1614 children seen.  250 children had fluoride varnish applied, while 119 children required extraction. And 187 total teeth were extracted, of which, 31 were baby teeth and 156 were permanent teeth. 

Now that's a big day!