Ugandan AIDS orphans treated with free dental care at UNMC

University of Nebraska Medical Center pediatric dental residents provided free dental care to a group of Ugandan AIDS orphans at the College of Dentistry Pediatric Dental Clinic on Wednesday.The four children, Mercy Akello, 8; Olivia Nakirya, 12; Mariam Nambogwe, 9; and Katherine Mugala, 12, are members of the musical group The Chosen. They tour the U.S. to raise awareness for the AIDS Orphan Education Trust.

"We go to churches, we go to schools, we go to nursing homes, just about anywhere that we're invited," said Nancy Tushabe, wife of AOET founder and director Sam Tushabe. "They sing and dance and give their stories and we talk about the organization. In that way, people have come in and supported the organization."

Miekka Milliken is the children's sponsor in Nebraska.

"My husband and I have sponsored them for four years," she said. "They stay with us, we schedule all of their performances. I speak at all of their performances. Basically, we're their host family."

When The Chosen perform at a school, the topic of AIDS is never directly addressed, Milliken said. Instead, she informs the students of the prevalence of disease, poverty, hunger and lack of access to education.

"It's a message of global thinking and awareness," she said. "We tell them, 'You play soccer, they play soccer. You dance and sing, they dance and sing. You love your family, they love their family.' Kids are kids."

The dances the children do are a mixture of tribal dances and modern hip-hop moves. The songs they sing are in many languages, as there are about 36 tribal languages in Uganda, Milliken said.

The children had never been out of their village in their entire lives, much less received dental care.

"It's just amazing to see children who haven't been touched by civilization, and that's a good thing," said Frank Driscoll, the pediatric dentist who supervised the visit. "It's fun to take part in something like this and help them out."

What the dentists mostly addressed was cavities in the children's baby teeth. Only four of the eight members of The Chosen had appointments, as they had the most complaints of oral pain, Milliken said.

"Most of the things we do don't require maintenance," Driscoll said. "The maintenance is in improving their hygiene. The information, the toothbrushes, things of that nature. Most of the problems they have can be fixed by simple fillings and restoration."

All of the children are orphans whose parents died of AIDS. Uganda has been absolutely devastated by AIDS since the mid-'80s. The so-called ABC approach to preventing AIDS - abstinence, be faithful, use condoms - has been used publicly since 1987.

The prevalence of public education available to the citizens caused a brief decline in the number of HIV-infected people in the early '90s, but numbers are still high.

An estimated 940,000 people in Uganda live with HIV and 1.2 million children have been orphaned due to AIDS. Ugandan orphans have lost parents more frequently to AIDS than any other cause, according to the AVERTing HIV and AIDS Web site.

Many orphaned children must take on the responsibilities of their deceased parents, such as taking care of younger siblings, doing housework and bringing in money. This often results in poor academic performance, and sometimes the children are forced to drop out of school altogether.

The AIDS Orphan Education Trust is an "independent, indigenous, non-governmental organization with the prime mandate of providing an education - formal and/or vocational - to desperately poor, neglected and forgotten orphans whose parents have died of AIDS," according to the AOET Web site.

The founder, Sam Tushabe, was an orphan himself from age 6. He worked his way up in school, paying his own fees all the way through college, Milliken said. His goal was to make sure no child would ever suffer as he had.

AOET runs a primary school with 480 students, as well as a high school with 49 students.

"We support children with direct school sponsorship and school supplies," cited the AOET Web site. "We deliberately have 65 percent as girl children on the sponsorship. This reduces early marriages and levels of prostitution among the girl child[ren]."

AOET also has feeding programs, female empowerment groups and a children's village with 13 homes, which houses 83 children.

"The thing about Uganda is, it's not just AIDS and sickness and disease," said Kelsea Kult, a secondary education major at UNO who has done mission work in Uganda. "It's just one rebel leader taking hundreds and thousands of lives. Thirty thousand children have been abducted in 23 years, which is ridiculous."

Two rebel groups - the Lord's Resistance Army and the Allied Democratic Forces - have terrorized Uganda since the early '80s, according to the Global Security Web site.

"A lot of AIDS gets spread that way," Kult said. "The rebels purposely infect women and young, 13-year-old children."

However, Kult did see promise for betterment of Uganda's state in the future.

"We went up into the hostile area and helped build schools and do farm work," she said. "We tried to re-establish the communities and give them hope. But they're the ones who gave us hope, because the people there are so full of joy.