A visit to Dzaleka Refugee Camp

This is a guest post written by Nigel and Vicky Milne of Smileawi.

Dzaleka is a UNHCR run protracted refugee camp on the outskirts of Lilongwe which had 52678 persons of concern in December 2021 and an estimated 300 new arrivals per month since then. 62% of the refugees are from the DRC with the remainder coming mostly from Burundi and Rwanda.

In May of this year, following on from a workshop in Mponela, five of us, Nigel Milne, Vicky Milne and Lisa Taylor of Smileawi, Lorna MacPherson of the Borrow Foundation and David Conway of the University of Glasgow, decided to visit Dzaleka Refugee Camp at the invitation of Dr Jean Bolobolo. Jean became a friend of Smileawi in 2021 when he took part in the Smileawi/Bridge2 Aid course which trained him to teach volunteers to deliver vital oral health messages to their communities. Smileawi were delighted to then fund him to train 20 Oral Health Promotors within the Dzaleka camp and were pleased to be able to meet 13 of them during this visit.

Unfortunately, due to work commitments Jean was unable to join us and we were instead greeted by Hope Etete, one of the Oral Health Promotors. We met at the Efata Clinic which is a dental clinic at the gates of the camp set up by a Korean dentist Dr James Kang but which is rarely open due to the lack of personnel and resources. It is hoped that with the help of volunteers and some funding this clinic will help to relieve pain for patients within the confines of the camp. Smileawi is keen to be involved and in fact we have recently sent an autoclave from Scotland which should arrive by the end of June. We have also provided local anaesthetic cartridges, needles and an emergency dental kit.

After spending time at the Efata Clinic, we drove through the camp with Hope to meet the Oral Health Promotors. We spent a valuable hour and a half in dialogue with them and were delighted to hear of the work they are doing, spreading important oral health messages to their friends and families, within schools and throughout their communities. They are faced with daily challenges but see the importance of their role and were proud to wear their Oral Health Promotor T-shirts.

One of the main challenges they face is that the price of toothbrushes and toothpaste is very expensive but sweets and sugar products are relatively cheap. Professor Conway confirmed this, when he visited the small shop across the road from the school/church complex we had met in and found plentiful sweets and sugar sweetened beverages on sale, including a highly acidic/high sugar powder designed to be added to water as a drink. 

A particular concern for the oral health promotors was the high number of people within their communities suffering from dental pain and the lack of access to treatment. This brought home to us the importance of the Efata clinic. The Oral Health Promotors were pleased to hear that Dr Bolobolo, Dr Kang and colleagues were volunteering to run clinics to help these patients whenever time and resources allowed and Smileawi are committed to supporting these good men in this project.

At the end of the visit we were all very aware that the problems and challenges faced by the Oral Health Promotors in Dzaleka refugee camp are the same as we have encountered across the country of Malawi, but the fact that the people are also all refugees adds an unimaginable number of other issues which we felt unable to comprehend. We came away humbled by the kindness we were shown and warm welcome we received and a resolve to help where we can.