17 year old Ashonda Nesbitt is getting her teeth checked which has not always been a luxury her family could afford. Her mother says Ashonda had eleven cavities and they didn't have the money to help her so she had to suffer in pain in school.
Her mother Robion says, "Just pain constantly. The nurse would call me at work all the time. She would say, Mrs. Nesbit I have Ashonda in my office again. She is having a tooth ache what do you want me to do?"
According to Cindy Roddey, Executive Director of Healthy Smiles the free children's dental clinic where Ashonda now gets her dental work done, Spartanburg County is the worst in the state for children with poor dental health.
Roddey says, "We do have a lot of households that rely on well water so we don't have the fluoride in their water. We think often it might be a generational issue. Lack of information and lack of education.”
According to Roddey, many children are often taken to the emergency room, but all the doctors can do there is provide pain medication. She says Healthy Smiles is they are faced with more than one thousand children each year that need their help but the group desperately needs more funding and volunteers.
Roddey says, "If we could have four hours of each dentist time within Spartanburg County we certainly could serve double the children we currently serve maybe even triple."
Not only does poor dental health affect a child's school work, but it can also cause serious problems if the infection gets in their blood stream. For children like Ashonda having dental care means living life and going through her senior year pain free.
Ashonda's mother says,. "I know her teeth are going to get better."
Healthy Smiles is a free dental clinic for children. It serves needy children who are not covered by dental insurance or are on Medicaid. For more information call Healthy Smiles at 864-592-4696.
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