For each of the past two years, Kent dentist Mark Walker of the Meridian Dental Clinic has joined a team of doctors and dentists in a trip to Haiti, but due to the earthquake, he is worried that this year\u2019s trip, scheduled for March, may not happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to see how that turns out,\u201d Walker said with a shrug Monday. \u201cWe\u2019re planning on going until we\u2019re told not to.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a member of Medical Relief International, Walker has visited both the capital, Port-Au-Prince, and a smaller city on the northern coast of the country, La Pointe.<\/p>\n
Walker and his team perform basic dental procedures for the residents for free, providing many with what may be their only exposure to a dentist.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople have severe needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker said he did a lot of tooth extractions while in Haiti, while other dentists performed fillings and other \u201cbasic dentistry\u201d that many in America take for granted.<\/p>\n
But while he compared much of what he saw to the worst affects that methamphetamine and other drug use can have on teeth here in the U.S., he said he saw no signs in Haiti that those dental conditions were drug- or alcohol-related.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just have no money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Despite the poverty, Walker said his overall sense of the Haitian people was very positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy impression is the people are pretty patient and law-abiding,\u201d he said, adding that there is a strong focus on the family unit. \u201cThey don\u2019t have much, so they are really family-oriented.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he heard about the quake, Walker said his thoughts turned to his friends and patients on the island, especially those living on the organization\u2019s Bolosse campus, a few miles uphill from the presidential palace, which collapsed during the quake.<\/p>\n
Walker said the people he knows all survived the quake, but much of the neighborhood surrounding the campus was destroyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty desperate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Even before the quake, Walker said Port-Au-Prince\u2019s infrastructure was in terrible shape and many of the citizens lived in concrete homes with corrugated metal roofs which lined narrow streets that may or may not have provided all of the necessities, like running water.<\/p>\n
But after the quake, Walker said he was \u201cstunned\u201d at the devastation he saw on TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir infrastructure was so poor anyway and now it\u2019s a mess,\u201d he said, describing one of the streets on which they traveled as \u201can interesting ride on; I guess you can call it a road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of the damage from the quake, Walker said he heard that along with medical teams, contractors may be joining his group for this year\u2019s trip.<\/p>\n
Walker urged people to donate to relief organizations to help out in Haiti and said he was \u201cproud\u201d of the response so far from America.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe money people are sending is going to be put to good use,\u201d he said. \u201cThey will want to rebuild.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to going down there again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For each of the past two years, Kent dentist Mark Walker of the Meridian Dental Clinic has joined a team of doctors and dentists in a trip to Haiti, but due to the earthquake, he is worried that this year\u2019s trip, scheduled for March, may not happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":15241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15240"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}