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(74.248.200.152) | I grew up in poverty and war torn Vietnam, yet as a child at the tender age of 10 or 11, I knew one day I will help the children of Africa, because I saw on television their hunger, I felt their suffering, they were in much worse situation than I was. So when I graduated from the University of Texas Dental School in 1985, I made my first month long dental volunteer trip was Africa - Sierra Leone. It turned out that I was correct, the children I helped most hardly had any cloth to speak of, they live in huts with dirt floor and have little to eat. That first trip was the beginning of almost 30 year journey in volunteer dentistry. I went back to Sierra Leone a few times until the civil war broke out in 1991. The gruesome 11 year civil war left over 50,000 dead and thousands of amputees. Sierra Leone is a tiny nation the size of Maine, has a population of 5.7 million and 70% of the world amputees. Sierra Leone is among the top 10 poorest countries in the world, and the least developed countries in the world. The whole country has 5 government dentists, the ratio is 1.14 million people per dentist, comparing to the US, 1,900 population per dentist, just imagine the basic dental needs! Your donation will go directly toward dental treatment for the children of Sierra Leone. Please send whatever you can to support this one of a kind project, make sure "for children of Sierra Leone" is on your donation note. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH.
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