Dentist gets his teeth into his latest mission

Brendon Ball, of Freshbrook Dental Practice, is about to make his latest trip to take dental equipment to Ukraine.

And he will leave behind a mobile clinic that can tour Ukraine's poor rural areas taking dental treatment to people who cannot afford to travel for it.

"In Ukraine the villages have become isolated from almost all health care," said Brendon.

"The public transport system is still very poor and people's wages are very low so they can't afford to travel to get any kind of health care.

"The contrast between the ability the capital city had to mount Eurovision and the villages is amazing. The villages are getting poorer and poorer."

Brendon, whose wife Natasha is Ukrainian, started taking dental equipment to Ukraine in 1999 and set up the Smile Menders charity.

He leaves on Wednesday for his fifth trip and this will be the second time he has delivered a mobile clinic.

"The first mobile clinic that we took started delivering the only care people had had in years," Brendon said. "It treated something like 6,000 patients in two years. It is doing a lot of good."

But the area Brendon delivers to the Cherkassy region in central Ukraine is about the size of Wales so more help is still needed.

So Brendon, along with retired Swindon dentist Richard Swift, will drive another clinic through Germany and Poland to Ukraine.

And while the old clinic is like a caravan that has to be towed the new one, which was previously used as the Swindon community service clinic, is completely self-contained in a lorry and so will be able to travel further.

After the four day drive to Ukraine Brendon will present the clinic to the head of oral health services in the region and, once it has been cleared by customs officers there, it will be used to tour villages offering dental treatment.

As Brendon prepared for his trip he was wished well by the new Mayor of Swindon Coun Ray Fisher, who has been his patient since 1976.