A Masjid managing committee, in association with Helping Hand Foundation, opens dental clinic in Hyderabad for fixing teeth freely for all. In what is perhaps a first in the city, a mosque at Achi Reddy Nagar has opened a dental clinic, which would provide treatment to residents of as many as 22 slums of the Old City.
The Masjid-e-Ishaq, which already runs a primary healthcare centre, is now equipped with a dental chair and has on board a dentist to diagnose the dental health of the residents of the neighbourhood in which it is located. According to the members of the masjid managing committee, people of all faiths are welcome here.
Screening centre
A collaborative effort of the masjid managing committee and Helping Hand Foundation, an NGO, the clinic, apart from providing regular dental care, would also double up as an oral cancer screening centre. The dental clinic at the mosque would offer dental procedures such as root canal treatment, restoring filling and removing scaling, and would also take up pain complaints, apart from other minor surgical interventions.
Speaking to #KhabarLive, the Helping Hand Foundation managing trustee, Mujtaba Hasan Askari, said, “For now, the clinic is operational on Thursday and Saturday. We have field-level screening on the remaining days. Also, there is a full-time doctor, Ali Akbar Khan, who is with us. The clinic is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The screening and dental procedures are free of charge”.
According to Askari, in the week since it was thrown open to public, the clinic has been able to screen between 15 and 20 patients a day.
Poor dental health
Touching upon field-level screenings, Askari said, “Field-level screenings are important as we have seen poor dental health in adults. There is data to prove this. Further, there is high consumption of tobacco, which is non-smoking in nature. These screenings are done to detect early symptoms of malignancy or pre-malignancy lesions”.
He added that a team of health counsellors would provide counselling on oral hygiene and other related issues to those with dental heath problems in the neighbourhood. #KhabarLive
