Improving the lot of Romanian youths
Orkney dentist's role helping street children in post-Ceausescu era
By Gillian Wylie

The dental team at the boys' home in Bucharest. Jill Douglas is pictured furthest left.

Every city in the world has its homeless. Every city harbours poverty, prostitution, child abuse, and substance abuse - but Romania has witnessed more than its share in recent years.

Romania's children - products of a dictatorship which all but forced women to have more babies than the country could afford - have been left to bear the brunt of their nation's poverty in its well-publicised orphanages and its streets.

And whilst post-Ceausescu Romania and the plight of its unwanted children may have largely disappeared from our TV screens these days, work still continues behind the scenes to help the thousands of young victims of the notorious dictator's regime.

Orkney dentist Jill Douglas is one of those who has dedicated her time, energy and expertise in order to help the street children who have been rescued from the streets of the country's capital Bucharest, and from Galiti on the banks of the Danube in eastern Romania.

Jill and her colleague Eoin MacGillivray have worked together to set up dental clinics in both cities, struggling alongside international charity workers to improve the lot of Romania's youths.

Jill, who has just returned from a brief visit to the clinic in Budapest, took time out to speak to The Orcadian about their work in Romania.

She explained that her fascination with Romania was longstanding: "I've always been interested in Rumania since reading Brother Andrew - the story of a man who smuggled bibles across the Border into Romania."

Her first visit was as a student on an exchange trip with fellow students in 1996. Jill followed up this visit in 1998 when she joined colleague and friend Eoin MacGillivray in setting up dental clinics for Romanian street children in Bucharest and Galati. She wrote her elective on the subject.

Since qualifying, she has returned on two further occasions; for six months in 1999 when she returned to the country with Eoin, and again in May for a week's stint ("mainly patching up and doing small fillings") at the surgery in Bucharest.

At the surgery in Bucharest, Jill begins work on one of their female patients.

Former street children, who had been picked up from the streets by charity workers, are housed and given proper care and an education so that they can have security and some kind of a future. The dental surgery where both Jill and Eoin spend most of their time is attached to a boys' home in Bucharest where the majority of street children live.

"It's a bit like London," she said. "Everyone goes to Bucharest."

In the winter, the homeless children have in the past showed considerable ingenuity: "Street kids live in heating tunnels," Jill explained. "Blocks of flats are heated from a central source so under the roads there are pipes with hot water running through them. If the children can get a maintenance manhole cover off they can get inside the ducts to keep warm.

"The authorities had started to block them up last time I was there, but I didn't notice this time."

Jill has detected change in the country recently: "It's a bit strange this time. It's eighteen months since I was there last. There are more high street shops now."

Romania would like to join the European Community, but there are strings attached: "They apparently won't be considered for the EU unless they look after their children. There's a big publicity push on now on TV trying to get things sorted out. The Romanian Government is aware that all of the West has seen the orphanages, but they're trying to push the good things about Romania such as the countryside, and attractions like Ceausescu's palace, which is huge - 11 floors high, 11 floors down, 3,000 rooms in the top floor alone! It's the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon."

Jill seems to enjoy working with the kids: "Most of the work is basic, fillings and extractions," she continued. "There are two standards of mouths. Some whose families were on the streets, who had always lived on the streets, and who didn't eat junk food - their teeth are good. Then there are others who were kicked out of their homes or put into a hostel, because they have been ill. For many of these children their teeth haven't formed properly so they can be quite deformed. Also there are runaways who have had access to juice and sugar, and who have similar problems to children here, such as decay."

She added that her young patients have to be very trusting. It's difficult enough to put children at their ease on a dental chair at the best of times, but when there is a language barrier the difficulties multiply.

"I can do some basic 'dentistry speak' in Romanian - 'Open your mouth' and 'it's not going to hurt,' but that's all."

She added that they have a translator with them for much of the time.

"When we're not there, they can use Romanian dentists but it's very expensive. They have the same materials but they have to import them, so it's very expensive."

Money doesn't grow on trees, of course, as far as Jill and Eoin are concerned either: "We fund our own trips, pay for our own flights. They look after us when we get there."

The clinic itself, is funded by donations through dental suppliers and some of the team's local churches.

Jill intends to return to Romania on a fairly regular basis, and there are plans to take the boys' home forward, and make improvements:

"They're hoping to get a medical centre in the middle of Bucharest and housing in the outskirts so that they can learn practical things - for example farming and mechanics."

Eighty per cent of Romania's economy, she explained, is based on farming.

"Romania is not a poor country. It has just been made poor by Ceausescu taking money for his regime."

However, she added: "They're starting to get back on their feet now."