If "bridging the gap" sounds as much like dental work as geopolitics, in one instance, at least, it is both. For four weeks last spring, dentists from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Cyprus and Turkey took post-graduate training at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine in Jerusalem, studying with Israeli dentists, and getting to know Jerusalem, from its shopping malls to its concert halls, its Mea Shearim quarter to its holy places.
"Despite all I'd read about Israel, I was astounded to see how closely Arab and Jew live with one another here," says Laila Lboukili, a periodontist from Morocco. "Whether it's in Hadassah Hospital where they lie in adjacent beds, or in the Old City where they own adjacent shops, people live without conflict."
Dr. Lboukili and 10 colleagues were studying in Israel mid-April to mid-May, the second such group of Middle Eastern dentists to do so. They were in Israel courtesy of MASHAV, the Foreign Ministry's Center of International Cooperation, and they were at the D. Walter Cohen Middle East Center for Dental Education, which opened at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine in May 1997 with the goal of building bridges to peace.
"What we've found since our very first symposium is that our profession and its challenges are similar wherever we practice," says Center Secretary Dr. Harold D. Sgan-Cohen of the Dental Faculty's Department of Community Dentistry and Oral Hygiene. "Whether it's overcentralization, inadequate budgets or balancing the needs of the individual against those of the community, there's growing feeling among dental professionals throughout the region that the time has come to work together toward promoting human health."
Although this is only the second course for dental professionals that MASHAV and the Center have run, it's already well known and extremely popular. The Jerusalem Dental School has a world reputation, and new applications to the course are made through Center representatives throughout the Middle East almost every week.
"The level and interests of participants differ very widely," says Dr. Sgan-Cohen, "but as the course is personally designed for each candidate, this doesn't present a problem. Some participants have worked in their specialties for years, others are just beginning their specialization. One of the Jordanians in the recent course was a dental technician not a dentist, so his requirements focused on prosthetic reconstruction. We try to ensure that everyone gets the training they need."
Israel provides dental education along three parallel paths, training its students, first, to practice high-level dentistry; second, to become dental health educators, emphasizing primary prevention and epidemiology; and, third, to function as an integral part of the medical team, caring for the dental needs of patients with heart problems, craniofacial disabilities, diabetes and cancers, as well as candidates for extensive facial surgery and bone marrow transplant. Within this overall framework, the visiting Middle Eastern professionals can select any of the Dental School's eight clinical departments in which to study.
"To no one's surprise, the most popular departments were Orthodontics, Periodontics and Oral Rehabilitation," says Dr. Sgan Cohen. "But some also chose our rarer specialties, as well. We had a couple in Oral & Maxillo-Facial Surgery, upgrading their skills in major facial reconstruction surgery in injured and tumor-stricken patients, and one in Pedodontics, focusing on providing optimum services to the child dental patient, and emphasizing the prevention of dental disease."
The visiting professionals clearly felt they'd gained from the course. They were impressed by the Hadassah dentists they worked with, who "not only do an enormous amount of clinical dentistry, but also have a very high level of specialization, and, in addition to all that, teach and do extensive research." Further, they took advantage of their month-long opportunity to exchange experience with one another and with their Israeli colleagues on fluoridation (a joint study Israeli-Palestinian study on the effect of fluoride in Gaza's water is currently underway), sealants, home- and school-based oral health education and provision of dental services. It's an exchange that is as valuable to the Israelis as to their visitors.
"For us, running this course is exciting, rewarding and -
in many ways -
still hard to believe, given the history of our region," says Dr. Sgan-Cohen. "We're working together with our neighbors, with Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Cypriot and Turkish dentists, discussing dentistry with them on a very serious level, establishing a growing group of alumni, and working together to improve dental health throughout the entire region."
Dr. Sgan-Cohen shared his own particular perspective with course participants, stressing primary prevention, epidemiology, health-care administration and research into all concepts of dental health education. He described to participants a recent six-month outreach project on the value of regular toothbrushing. Carried out at 11 well-baby clinics in Jerusalem, it effected an improvement of over 60% among 626 six- to 12-month old infants. Students were also exposed to the philosophy of a dental school as more than a collection of specialist departments, so that it does not become isolated from society and lose its special sense of human responsibility.