SHERWOOD CONTENT, Trelawny – Legendary sprinter Usain Bolt brought bright smiles to the faces of scores of students at his former Waldensia Primary and Infant School in his native Sherwood Content community on August 27 and 28 with the staging of a free dental outreach mission, through his foundation.

The two-day oral health-care mission was a partnership between the Usain Bolt Foundation, US-based SprintRay Foundation, The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona School of Dentistry and the Digicel Foundation.

The retired sprinting star, who has frequently given back to his community, whether through his annual Christmas treats or other forms, expressed his pleasure to provide the free dental care for not only the students, but throngs of adults who turned up at the school over the two days.

“It’s a great feeling to give back. To me this is a big deal because I understand growing up I was lucky to actually go to the dentist, not a lot, probably one or two times. And for me to can have this done and can give these kids an opportunity to have a bright smile, is a great feeling,” the world’s 100 and 200 metres record holder said.

“I just want to say thanks to SprintRay, the UWI Mona School of Dentistry and Digicel.”

SprintRay is a digital dentistry company, headquartered in California. Chief financial officer (CFO) of SprintRay Arun Subramony said he was happy that his company forged the partnership with Bolt.

“We bring in a lot of speed to the treatment in a dental clinic and that is the association we have with the Usain Bolt Foundation. He represents speed and we are the fastest 3D printer in the world and we bring the fastest 3D printing solutions for digital dentistry,” he said.

“We have been established for seven years now. In Jamaica, we have been here for one year after we signed the partnership agreement with Usain Bolt. Now we work very actively with the Jamaica Dental Association, we work very actively in partnership with The University of West Indies and we work with the Ministry of Health in Jamaica.”

The weekend’s outreach also kick-started the partnership between the Usain Bolt and SprintRay foundations to take oral health-care across rural communities in Jamaica.

Plans are afoot to acquire a bus to transport the medical practitioners to the communities for the staging of the charitable service.

“We are actually thinking of having a mobile lab…mobile bus called the Bolt Bus, which will come to rural parts like Sherwood Content to give affordable health care to everybody,” the SprintRay CFO told the Jamaica Observer West.

Dr Thaon Jones of The University of the West Indies Mona School of Dentistry explained that 20 dental students, under the watchful eyes of eight dentists, as a part of their undergraduate dental programme, provided the dental services over the two days.

“Most of the work that the dentists are doing is really supervising the students. We only step in if there’s a very difficult case that they can’t handle. Because, as I said, the aim is always to try to get the students to do the treatment because by doing so they will see how they impact the patient. And then in turn, we hope that they will internalise that impact and want to give back when they graduate,” Dr Jones explained.

Digicel’s Public Relations Manager Elon Parkinson said his company was happy “to provide the role of technology to the medics who absolutely need superfast Internet in order to connect to the cloud and to utilise their applications and software for the benefit of the patients”.

“This is part of the long-standing partnership with Usain, our brand ambassador and, of course, chief speed officer,” Parkinson stressed.

Principal of Waldensia Primary and Infant Nicola Ottie Anderson welcomed the initiative and expressed her desire for it to be an annual event.

“I think it’s a good venture, it would be great if it becomes an annual thing, it would be great,” Ottie Anderson remarked.

The students and older residents were very receptive to the dental outreach programme. For the most part, the students received cleaning. One adult male who had an extraction was overheard telling another community member that he could not sleep the night before the first day of the clinic because of a nagging toothache.