THREE Swindon dentists will leave for the Ukraine on Thursday towing a caravan and more than £20,000 worth of surgical equipment.

Brendan Ball and Richard and Linda Swift, based at the Freshbrook Village Centre and Milton Road, will travel through Germany and Poland to Chercassy in the former Soviet Union.

They will be accompanied by Dr Ball's Ukrainian wife Natasha. The couple, who were both divorced, met in July 1999 when Dr Ball and Dr Swift made their first aid trip to the region and she acted as their interpreter.

Natasha, 39, was sent to Swindon soon afterwards by aid charity Hope Now to translate for a team of Ukrainian dentists who were here on a visit, and she and Dr Ball were married the following year.

On their first trip for the Dentaid charity, he and 59-year-old Dr Richard Swift took £10,000 worth of goods contributed largely by other Swindon area dentists. The equipment included everything from needles and surgical gloves to dental drills and compressors, and was carried in the back of Dr Ball's Ford Galaxy car.

This time, they are also taking a four-wheel drive vehicle and a six-metre caravan which has been fitted out as a fully-equipped mobile dental surgery and will be left behind.

"It will be used largely to provide for children living in orphanages who cannot get necessary dental care," said Dr Ball, a 52-year-old New Zealander who is now a British citizen. The oblast (province) of Chercassy region is afflicted by terrible poverty, he added.

Many of those children have been left in the orphanages because their parents cannot afford to feed them.

Doctors and dentists earn the equivalent of less than £90 a month, regardless of how well qualified they are.

Like everybody else they survive by growing vegetables on small patches of land around their homes.

On their previous trip Dr Ball and Dr Swift took boxes packed with syringes and local anaesthetic because most dentists there had nothing with which to deaden pain even for patients having extractions.

"We asked other Wiltshire dentists to give us as much as they could," he said.

Much of the money for this trip has come from the Wiltshire Local Dental Committee.

They are also taking medical equipment from the surgery of Swindon GP Dr Dileep Godbole who died two years ago shortly after retiring.

"It's sad," said Dr Ball.

"But he would have been pleased that good use is going to be made of it."

The trip will cover a total of 2,800 miles and take about a week, and the three dentists will share the driving as far as the Ukraine border before Ukrainian drivers will take over.

The Swifts, of South Marston, plan to fly home while the Balls will stay for a second week to commission the mobile surgery.