Tin, as it is. Street Dentists in Pakistan

Something, and trash in Pakistan is enough at every turn.

By and large, this is a country where you can take and make a story from everything. And half of them will be about some kind of tin.

Street dentistry is one such example.

Imagine: you are walking along a dusty street full of tuk-tuks, motorcyclists, donkeys harnessed to carts, scurrying people, maneuvering between trays of dried fruits and nuts spread out on the ground with some vegetables, cars with fast food, and suddenly ... sitting right in front of you on earth a man whose other person is picking his mouth. Conventional iron ticks. Some terrible-looking instruments and ... dentures are spread right on the ground near them. This is not a horror movie shot. This is today's reality in Pakistan.

In a country where 78% of the population is below the poverty line and does not have access to normal medicine, people have no other options how to treat teeth, straighten bones, perform cosmetic procedures and even receive surgical help right on the street.
Live looks, of course, complete savagery for us. But ... I repeat, they have no other options.

While walking around Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Faisalabad and Lahore, I saw such “advertising” signs and boxes with crowns everywhere. According to the estimates of specialized media, in Pakistan there are about 13 thousand illegal street dentists, the qualifications of which are very, very different - from quite skilled dentists to complete laymen who decided, by analogy with date sellers, to try their hand at a new business.

This is how this stunning picture looks on the street. Instead of the usual lying leather chair - a low stool, instead of bright lighting lamps - ordinary daylight, instead of a bor-machine - hand drills, tongs, even files. For grinding teeth and aligning inserted crowns with the level of other teeth.

The most common service for these dentists is inserting teeth instead of teeth.

Since the majority of Pakistanis are in trouble with medicine, prevention, and quality of food, their teeth begin to roll in very early and if you do not use the services of illegal dentists, you can be completely without teeth.

To insert such a prosthesis on the street costs from 200 rupees (a little less than $ 2). In the clinic, the price starts at 3,000 rupees (that's $ 28). If we talk about more serious procedures, then their cost can reach up to $ 200. These are just cosmic figures for ordinary Pakistanis.

As a result, there is only one option - to go to the "dental" alleys of large cities, where a person will quickly have a bad tooth pulled out, a crown will be glued (yes, it is glued) or a false jaw will be picked up. Yes, you need to consider that all these procedures are without any anesthesia.

They say that patients often lose consciousness from pain. We are not talking about the treatment of caries, fillings, removal of nerves and filling of nerve channels.

Tools, of course, are sterilized. This happens in a basin gurgling on a gas stove. Each dentist has an antiseptic fluid, which he rinses his hands before putting them into the patient's mouth. But ... is there any point in such sterilization? Looking at how and where it all happens, I'm not sure.

By the way, as a rule, the place of work of street dentists is always attracted by onlookers who actively comment on everything that happens and can calmly take a look at any of the dentist’s accessories, for example, an inserted jaw, which in a couple of minutes will already be in the patient’s mouth when trying on.

The finished result is a street dentist. Sites of his work can be easily identified by the red-brown color at the base of the teeth. These are traces of antiseptic fluid ...

This is how these same places looked in these same cities in the middle of the last century. As you can see, over 70 years nothing has changed in this country.