Allan Walker on a previous visit to Rwanda

Help needed to rebuild Rwandans’ oral health

A former community cop from North Berwick is looking to improve dental health in east Africa

A retired community police officer from East Lothian is looking for dental volunteers to help provide oral health advice and treatment in rural Rwanda.

Allan Walker, who spent the last 10 years of his 32-year police career on the community beat in North Berwick, has set up a charitable concern called Build Rwanda which is dedicated to improving the lives of the local population.

So far he has been involved setting up worker cooperatives and micro finance in the country as well as taking a group of East Lothian youngsters out to volunteer in the small east African nation last year.

On his last visit he stayed with a Rwandan family outside Kigali and noticed that their oral health was quite poor. On returning he decided to look into the possibility of enlisting dental volunteers to go out with the aim of treating local people and providing advice on their general oral health.

Allan believes that the changing diet of the population – which is becoming more westernised – allied to a lack of oral health education is to blame.

He said: “I think it is partly diet but also lack of knowledge and education as well. I mean, when you look at an orphanage with 600 kids, what chance have you got?”

Allan is looking for help and advice at this stage with the aim of sending volunteers out to Rwanda in 2013 to start treating patients and provide oral health education.