The dental clinic of the ‘Mundo a Sorrir’ project, located in Alta de Lisboa, parish of Lumiar, restores smiles and, above all, self-esteem to the socio-economically weaker population thanks to the free consultations it promotes.
Operating since the beginning of January this year, the clinic in Lumiar has joined the one that has already existed since 2018 in the parish of Santo António, also in Lisbon, with the mission of providing oral health care and psychosocial support to economically vulnerable populations.
Catarina Sousa, one of the seven dentists who work in the project’s Lisbon clinics, has taken over as clinical director of ‘Lumiar a Sorrir’, also providing consultations at the Laura Alves Social Center, located in the parish of Santo António.
According to Catarina Sousa, the latest clinic arose “above all from the need of the population” and to respond to the oral health needs of those who belong to the parishes of Santa Clara and Lumiar.
In order to get an appointment, you have to go to the parish council, “where a series of elements are asked for, to see if people fit the criteria needed to be users of the clinic,” Catarina Sousa explained to Lusa.
“From then on, we carry out perfectly normal treatments, just like any other clinic. The idea is always to work hard on habits. We’re talking about people who often don’t have any kind of health or oral hygiene habit. And so we also have psychosocial support at the same time as medical and dental support,” he said.
Maria Ofélia, 49, came to the clinic through her social worker. She met the necessary criteria and, as she told Lusa, without this “spectacular financial help” she wouldn’t be able to have all the dental treatments she needs, which will give her a new smile.
“I was in a lot of need, in a lot of pain. Everything was taken care of with the medical reports, the prior consultation and then I started the treatment,” explained Maria Ofélia.
She has now tried on the molds, made some minor adjustments and, in a week’s time, the final prosthesis will be delivered.
“For me it’s not just the prosthesis, not just the economic part. It’s also the personal part. I was feeling low self-esteem with just one tooth, I don’t like looking at myself in the mirror like this and so [the clinic appointment] helps me in everything, in several areas,” she said.
Maria Ofélia also revealed that her children need “expensive treatments” and so she is going to start the process so that they can also benefit from consultations, adding that if she finds someone she knows who needs it, she will “pass the word on, for sure”.
Although it’s still in its early stages, the clinic in Lumiar, in Lisbon’s Upper Town, has already carried out around 30 first-time consultations, which Catarina Sousa says is “promising” because they’re getting a lot of demand, although she recognizes that the start-ups “are always sometimes a little slower” than they’d like.
According to the doctor, and based on her experience, “many people arrive at the clinics with very significant tooth loss”, others who “don’t have any oral hygiene habits established in their family”.
“We get scenarios like this that we didn’t think would be possible to find in our country, but which are more common than we would like. We’re talking about people who have never been to the dentist, people in their 50s who are coming to the dentist here with us for the first time, people who have never brushed their teeth, who use one toothbrush for the household,” he lamented.
According to Catarina Sousa, more than dental treatment, which she recognizes is what “people obviously need and crave the most”, there is also a lot of work on the “psychosocial side and preparing these people to effectively change their habits in a way that is effective and really meaningful for them”.
André Sousa, coordinator of ‘Lumiar a Sorrir’, ‘Santa Clara a Sorrir’ and ‘Santo António a Sorrir’, explained that the project began in the North, in Porto and Braga, and expanded to Lisbon in 2018, with clinics also taking place in Cascais.
“There are very few dental services available. There was the possibility, through a PRR (Recovery and Resilience Program) and the Lisbon City Council, of extending our intervention, namely to Alta de Lisboa and here we are,” said André Sousa.
According to the coordinator, hundreds of people have been rehabilitated since 2018.
The aim, according to André Sousa, is for the team of seven full-time professionals and volunteers, who are also dentists, to be able to carry out “close to 4,000 consultations, with 1,600 community screenings” by the end of 2025.
“In other words, we also go to the local institutions in these two parishes, screen the community, detect and, above all, train professionals and also users in these issues of oral health and pathology,” he said, adding that “some more serious pathologies” have already been detected.
The ‘Mundo a Sorrir’ project is a Non-Governmental Organization for Development (NGDO), founded in July 2005 in Porto, which promotes health and oral health as a universal right among populations in situations of socio-economic vulnerability, carrying out its activities in Portugal and in some Portuguese-speaking countries.
