Dentist uses fun environment to help children relax
Dental Smiles for Kids founder and owner Dr Joyce Gitangu with a patient at her clinic. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA |
What you need to know:
Dr Gitangu worked abroad and after six years she was ready to come back to Kenya and establish a children’s dental clinic.
The Dental Smiles for Kid, a clinic at Nairobi’s Yaya is like a children’s playground. The dental clinic with colourful decor, a playroom, Spongebob cartoon-themed small chairs is where Dr Joyce Gitangu turned her passion into a business.
The doctor trained in Tufts and Harvard universities in US designed the room and sourced most of the equipment in the clinic from abroad.
“A child gets to wear colourful protective gear while seated on the dental seat and watches cartoons or plays music from the dental screen which makes him feel like a super hero,” says Dr Gitangu.
The child-friendly environment makes the children feel at ease.
“We ensure children are taught oral health in a fun environment, making it easier for them to remember. When children see other children having a positive dental experience they have a positive model to follow,’’ says the doctor who opened the clinic last December.
Dr Gitangu worked abroad and after six years she was ready to come back to Kenya and establish a children’s dental clinic.
“When I came back to Kenya to visit, I saw a need for specialised dental care for children as my friends and family members often asked me to check their children’s teeth,” says Dr Gitangu.
Having worked in a paediatric dental clinic in the US, she seeks to give Kenyan children a difference feel at the hospital. She does not advocate for pulling of children’ shaky teeth, saying that it should be a natural process as it is pushed out by the budding tooth.
Parents also sign consent forms before she performs any procedure on their children, which, she says she learnt from her training abroad. ‘‘It is important due to the delicate procedures in dentistry,’’ she says.
Dental Smiles not only provides dental procedures, but the young patients are also taught how to clean teeth and maintain high levels of oral hygiene at no cost.
Her clinic focuses of preventative care for children by keeping the mouth healthy, but she says most parents will not take their children to the dentist unless they have a shaky tooth or decay.
Dr Gitangu says that oral hygiene in adults is deteriorating, a situation that could have been prevented at an early stage. Poor eating habits is the number one cause of oral cavities in children with the black staining of teeth being one of the biggest problems she has encountered with children at the clinic, she says.
Tooth decay in children is caused by eating sugary foods or if infants are left to sleep with a bottle of milk in the mouth.
