JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Members of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardsons’ 673d Medical Group recently returned from Pacific ANGEL 17-3 Fiji July 8 through 25, which brought medical care to the islands of SavuSavu and Lautoka.
PACANGEL 17-3 Fiji was a total force, joint and combined humanitarian assistance, civil-military operation led by Pacific Air Forces. Participants from the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Army National Guard partnered with the Republic of Fiji military forces, as well as the local provincial and municipal health departments. The multilateral partners included Australia, Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Eye Institute, Fiji Red Cross, and local parent-teacher associations also participated.
The mission included general health, dental, optometry, physical therapy and engineering civic action projects as well as various subject-matter expert exchanges.
Air Force Capt. Kevin R. Adams, dentist from the 673d Dental Squadron, was the team lead for the dental teams.
“The mission wasn’t just about seeing patients,” Adams said. “It was about networking, building bridges and learning to overcome obstacles so if something were to arise in the future, we already have the pipelines in place to be efficient with our response, whether that would be a natural disaster or the like.”
Understanding cultural differences is important to the success of any mission. Adams said the Fijians are known to be very friendly people and to communicate with their eyebrows a lot. This was something the dental team felt they had to learn quickly, so they could perform their tooth extractions efficiently and as painlessly as possible for the patient.
“It was cool to have all these different bases, different countries, everyone just meeting up,” Adams said. “No one knew anyone when we first got there, but by the end we were very close. We were with each other from dusk to dawn, overcoming challenges and discomforts, together constantly.”
Likewise, the pediatric team worked alongside their Fijian counterparts as well as the other multilateral partners.
“By necessity for the success of the mission, the maximum amount of general care was given to as many people as possible by the 10 providers, which included Fijian doctors as well,” Air Force Maj. Charles Q. Pace, medical director of pediatrics for the 673d Medical Operations Squadron. “We worked through the long lines together as efficiently as possible.”
In addition to working together for efficiency, the doctors teamed up to overcome obstacles the remote environment presented.
“Generally, you can get a tooth out with just hand instruments,” Adams said. “Every now and then, though, you need a drill to drill bone away. We didn’t have a drill, so it definitely led to some challenges. The Fijian dentists were really good at that, though, because they never have a drill available. Our team relied on them to teach us some of their tricks to help get those teeth out. I learned a lot about field dentistry from them.”
Those opportunities led to the strengthening of alliances and helped them overcome other obstacles the teams faced.
“Field sterilization was a challenge,” Adams said. “We didn’t have giant autoclaves like we have here, so we had to essentially use pressure cookers to sterilize our instruments. That’s challenging because a windy day is now a problem because the flame isn’t efficient. You have to keep the pressure cookers at a certain amount of pressure, for a certain amount of time for the instruments to be safe to use. We then had to build a barrier around the pressure cookers to keep them out of the wind, so we could keep them efficient.”
Much like the obstacle faced regarding the sterilization of dentistry tools, the pediatric and medical practitioners faced a lack of medical charts being available.
“It was very difficult to answer the most reoccurring questions by our patients’ parents,” Pace said. “They would ask us if we thought their child was eating enough or growing normally. There was no way for us to know because there was no record of the child being seen from year to year to establish basic growth charts, which is a tool we use to measure this.”
The issues the pediatricians faced were likewise a concern for the dentists.
“Some of the people had never seen a dentist, a lot of the cases are kind of heart-wrenching,” Adams said. “For example, when you see an eight-year-old kid who needs every tooth pulled out. They don’t have fluoride in their drinking water and most of the population doesn’t know about oral hygiene. They actually thought that chewing sugar cane helps, when in fact it was destroying them.”
Altogether, the dentists helped 583 patients and worked on 799 teeth, spanning the two islands. Adams considered their mission a success.
“It’s nice helping people that haven’t been helped before like that; they were so grateful,” Adams said. “In the Air Force everyone has care and is used to having care, so it’s a part of your day, getting your dental exam. Over there they are just thankful to have someone really pay attention to their needs, really take care of them and have the means to do it.”