Low-cost mobile dental unit for oral care service delivery in third world countries: from concept to operation

In this paper, we design and implement two low-cost dental units in order to remedy the difficulties of its accessibility for healthcare services in hospitals and the difficulties encountered with the maintenance of medical equipment. In developing countries, income is low and a huge amount of people do not have access to basic dental healthcare partly due to the cost involved in the purchase and maintenance of imported dental units. In the present work, two varieties of dental units were designed and built using electronic, pneumatic and hydraulic circuits. The first one is a dental cabinet with an electronic command board and without a chair. The second is made of hydraulic and pneumatic systems as command with a foldable chair and a stand. The pneumatic and hydraulic systems enable the dentist to operate the instruments by hand and/or foot. The mechanical design of the two dental units was done in Inventor software. Both equipment types were installed in three healthcare centres in Cameroon and their initial social impact was investigated.