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Mundo a Sorrir is a non-profit NGO.
It includes health professionals who work as volunteers.
It has a project called CASO, Oral Health Centre.
It aims to provide dental assistance to people in need
who are institutionalized.
For these people,
dental care is a means of social reintegration.
Project CASO is located in Oporto.
Our target audience is people in need
who are institutionalized as a social intervention measure.
They are sent to us by social enterprises.
We assist children, institutionalized children,
the elderly, drug addicts, the homeless, immigrants,
victims of domestic violence.
We also help ***-positive patients.
Mundo a Sorrir, namely the CASO project,
is sponsored by institutions
who donate dental care material, consumables and even equipment.
For example: "Dentina" and "Montillano". We also get the support from labs.
Each month Lab Dental Lopes gives us 10 sets of dentures.
We work with a team of 39 volunteer dentists.
At the moment, we have 24 partners,
resulting in 4,861 appointments.
From these appointments, 11,576 treatments were carried out.
115 patients were rehabilitated with dental prostheses.
Project CASO increases physical and mental well-being.
Our main aim is the social reintegration of individuals.
Our association is Soroptimist.
Since 2004, we have had a shelter
that takes in women and children victims of domestic violence.
It was a difficult situation that was not being addressed.
There was no dentist in the health centre in our area.
The national health system doesn’t address
this sort of dental problem.
In the partnership with Mundo a Sorrir
all our victims of domestic violence and their children
are given assistance.
I don't know any scheme like this.
It was our only option.
It was a problem which ceased to be a problem
because we have Mundo a Sorrir.
I felt I was too young to have my mouth in such bad shape.
Many teeth were missing.
I would have no teeth, because I couldn't afford new ones.
Completing my treatment
was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
In the short and medium term
we expect to have more volunteers
so that we can have more partners.
We this objective in mind,
we hope to provide more appointments and reach more people.
In the long term, we intend to replicate our project
by creating new clinics in the centre and south of Portugal.