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Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition

No Pre-Registration Fee The Largest Dental Meeting/ Exhibition/Congress in the United States FOR MORE INFORMATION: Greater New York Dental Meeting® 570 Seventh Avenue - Suite 800 New York, NY 10018 USA Tel: (212) 398-6922 / Fax: (212) 398-6934 E-mail: victoria@gnydm.com WWW.GNYDM.COM Scientic Meeting: Friday - Wednesday, November 23 - 28 Exhibit Dates: Sunday - Wednesday, November 25 - 28 MARK YOUR CALENDAR A A N C Never a pre-registration fee at the Greater New York Dental Meeting M H 600 EXHB Jacob K. Javits Convention Center 11th Ave. between 34-39th Streets (Manhattan) Q  New York Marriott Marquis otel LV D A - N T L D TH � S AV M TH 350 S P Seminars, ands-on Workshops, Essays & Scientic Poster Sessions as well as Specialty and Auxiliary Programs E P  V  S P  H E F E N Y C   B  H  V   H ! Sponsored by the New York County Dental Society and the Second District Dental Society B UFFALO, N.Y., USA: “We have friends in Syria who were visited by police because their son had attend- ed a rally. When they told the police that their son wasn’t home, the police pro- ceeded to shoot the three children who were there, in front of their mother, as a warning. One of those children was three years old.” This is just one of the many stories about conditions in Syria told by Othman Shibly, DDS, MS, assistant professor in the Depart- ment of Periodontics and Endodontics at the University at Buffalo School of Den- tal Medicine. According to recent news re- ports, when the United Nations withdrew its observers in Syria in June, deaths in- creased by 78 percent; in July they went up another 55 percent; and then up near- ly 48 percent in August to more than 5,000. Deaths of Syrians are now in excess of 30,000 since the rebel uprising began in March 2011. Syria was Shibly’s home country; it is where he still had family.He wanted to contribute something meaningful to help those Syrians who had been displaced and injured and are now living in the Turkish refugee camps. On June 29, he went to Turkey to attend an aca- demic conference in Istanbul and during the second week of his visit he went to one of the camps — the Kilis Refugee Camp next to the Syrian Border in Gaziantep City in Tur- key — and spent a week assessing the oral health needs of those who had escaped from the Assad regime. At the time, the camp had 11,000 people. Shibly had anticipated a great deal of need but what he found shocked him. “There were people with broken or infect- ed teeth — this I expected. But that’s not all. There were people who had been injured by having soldiers push the end of a rifle into their teeth; people with broken jaws. People with injuries to the face. So many people. Some of these were children,” said Shibly. Shibly knew that one visit wouldn’t be enough to address the all the problems. The camp needed a dental clinic with trained personnel to help with oral health and in- juries every day. Shibly said that when he returned to Buffalo, to UB, he put together a plan. First, he deter- mined the costs needed to purchase enough dental equipment for two camps. It would Professor to launch dental clinic in Turkey to treat Syrian refugees take from $70,000 to $100,000 per camp. When people heard Shibly’s stories they wanted to help. He was able to raise $15,000 from friends’ donations in West- ern New York and received $30,000 from dentists in Waterloo, Ontario. And when he told another group of friends and asso- ciates that he was $5000 from his goal, they told him not to worry: they had the rest of the money. Shibly has just sent the donated funds through a charity to a dental company that sells their equipment in Turkey (the den- tal company discounted the merchandise in support of this humanitarian cause). Once the instruments arrive, Shibly will travel back to the Turkish camp this fall with his colleague, Fadi Ayoub, UB assistant profes- sor of restorative dentistry. Syrian medical relief workers will provide a place within their medical centers in the camps to set up the dental clinics. Shibly and Ayoub will then work with Syr- ian camp refugees -- who are also dentists — to have them run the clinic’s day-to-day dental operations for an allowance, and both of them will return about every two months on a rotational basis. A team from the Syrian Medical Society and the Islamic- American Medical Society is also collabo- rating with Shibly and Ayoub in their clin- ical rotations. Additionally, Shibly is organizing a sched- ule log for American dentists to choose the times they wish to donate care so that the clinics are always adequately staffed. “We have to go back because there is so much work. As a periodontist, I can do oral surgery. I can also bring oral surgeons un- der whose guidance I can perform special- ized procedures,” Shibly said. While Shibly is elated to have raised such a large amount of money in such a short time, the conditions that surround his vol- unteer initiative weigh heavily on him. “From a humanitarian perspective, the United Nations has failed. And the world community just watches. They have given money, which is appreciated, but it’s like giving Tylenol to a cancer patient for pain relief. It’s not enough. “The world has not learned its lessons from the atrocities of the Holocaust, Bosnia, So- malia and Rwanda. How many must die before there is intervention,” he said. Then his voice softens as he speaks with thanks and admiration about the ortho- pedic surgical resident who put his train- ing on hold to go to Syria to provide medi- cal care, working for nothing, and the Syr- ian-American pharmacist who brought her whole family with her -- her children scrub- bing the floors of the pharmacy -- while she provides her expertise for free. “So even out of bad there is some good,” Shibly said smiling. (Source: University at Buffalo School of Dental Med- icine) 14 Dental tribune Middle East & Africa Edition | November 2012rEgIoNal