WHEN award-winning dentist Mitra Najafi signed up to join a charity project offering dental care to some of the poorest people in the world, she had no idea quite how life-changing the expedition might be.

Just back from her trip to Tanzania working with the Bridge 2 Aid project, Mitra is still coming to terms with what she experienced - and she is already planning a return visit.

“It really was an incredible experience. The people we were treating had very little in material terms but they were so loving.

“Many were living with terrible pain because of infections in their mouths and we were forced to carry out extractions that must have been very painful to bear.

“But still they said thank you and gave us a beautiful smile when we had finished,” she said.

Mitra was one of a team of volunteer dentists and nurses who gave their time to help the poor villagers who might never normally get to see a dentist.

“We were an incredible group.We came from all different backgrounds and our ages ranged from nurses in their 20s up to a dentist who was in his seventies.

“We worked incredibly hard in really hot conditions - sometimes it was so humid it was hard to breathe.

“But we all had an amazing time - and we are planning to go back next year.” she said.

During the fortnight Mitra and the team spent in Tanzania they saw hundreds of patients and removed more than 1,000 teeth.

As well as carrying out treatments themselves, the team helped to train up eight new clinical officers who will now work in their own communities.

“In the beginning they didn’t know much about dentistry but by the end of the trip they were able to perform extractions that dentists in this country train for years to learn.

“It was an incredibly moving experience watching Kayanda, the student I trained, receive his final certificate,” she said.

If you would like to find out more about the Bridge to Aid charity or you would like to make a donation to help fund the critical work they do, go to www.bridge2aid.org

This is an extract from an email Mitra sent while she was in Tanzania and it beautifully illustrates the life-saving work that Bridge 2 Aid encourages.

“I had a 7 year old girl the other day who came with her school mates to see us with toothache.

“She was dirty but very pretty wearing a dress three size too big with lots of holes in it and no shoes. Her feet were cracked and very dirty. She had the most beautiful big black eyes I’ve ever seen but so full of sadness and pain.

“Her teacher told me she’d lost both her parents to Aids in the last 10 months and been bullied in school and beaten up badly a few times. She had suffered from toothache for six month. She wouldn’t even look at me when I was examining her as if she was scared of people - she wouldn’t even blink or move or say anything as if her entire body was numb.

“I tried so hard to communicate and connect with her. Holding her hands, cuddling her and trying to talk with the help of the CLINICAL officer that I’m training who also translates for me but there was nothing there. Her name was Laticia.

“We managed to get her to open her mouth so I could examine her. Laticia also had Aids herself and I could see signs of it in her mouth as I was examining her - I felt devastated!

We numbed her gently and my clinical officer asked if he could take the tooth out and I let him so I could sit in front of Laticia and hold her tiny little hands to comfort her as I thought she must be very nervous like any child would be.

“Still she refused to look at me. As my clinical officer started with the extraction, I saw tears running down from the corner of her beautiful big eyes on her cute angelic little face but she just sat there in silence the whole time and took it without moving.

“How could a child just sit there and take this? I looked in her eyes and they were filled with fear - that’s when I broke down in tears myself. There was too much sadness in those eyes. She probably knew she was going to die soon before she even got the chance to experience living.

“But I was determined to help her so I had to pull myself together quickly and just get on with it.

“I told my dental officer that I wanted to take the tooth out gently myself to make sure Laticia didn’t feel anything.

“The tooth came out quickly and as she was leaving she turned back finally looked at me and gave me a smile, while her gorgeous eyes were still full of tears.

“A picture of that smile is constantly in my head - and will stay there forever.”