- The data collected through the platform will be included in a national study on the oral health of children from rural areas
Bucharest, March 20, 2019 – On World Oral Health Day, Merci Charity Boutique Association and the Vodafone Romania Foundation are launching the Mobile Medical Offices and Units App (ACUMM), the first digital platform to manage the operations of a mobile dental practice. The new digital instrument will be used to collect the data needed to carry out a national study on the oral health of children from rural areas, conducted between March and July 2019. The Vodafone Romania Foundation finances the project with 170,000 lei.
The team of the mobile dental office „Zâna Merciluță”, a project launched by Merci Charity Boutique Association, will test the digital platform over the next 5 months. Operations performed by the app include managing the patients data, monitoring access to dental treatment services in rural areas, identifying the most common dental affections, analyzing severe affections prevented through prophylaxis or dental treatment, as well as estimating the value of the dental interventions done using the mobile practice infrastructure. At the end of July, the data collected will be included in a study on the oral health of children from rural Romania.
Preliminary data collected between July 1st and November 30th 2018 from 350 children located in 19 villages, found that the most common dental affection is decay, with an average of 3,47 carries/child, situated at the upper limit of the European average. According to the World Health Organization1, children aged 12 have between 0,5 and 3,5 dental caries on average.
„Zâna Merciluță” program was launched in 2014 with the creation of the first mobile dental practice and benefited from the support of the Vodafone Romania Foundation through the „World of Difference” and the „Good deeds Fund” programs. The total investment of the Vodafone Romania Foundation in this project has reached 340,000 lei. The mobile medical office has been operational for 18 months now and will continue its journey in the rural areas in the coming months. The total number of children examined from the start of the project until mid-2019 is estimated at 1,800.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the Vodafone Romania SA’s business. During its over 20 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,132 programs run by 730 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. These projects had 3 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people, physically, socially or economically disadvantaged. So far, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has invested over 30 million euros in projects run by nonprofit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone.
Merci Charity Boutique is a nonprofit organization founded in 2012, whose mission is to provide support to humanitarian causes through mobile healthcare solutions and educational projects, being focused on helping children with medical and social problems. Information on the association’s projects is available at www.mercicharity.ro. Further details about „Zâna Merciluță” project are available at www.zanamerciluta.ro.
Source:
1 http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/oral-health/data-and-statistics
