ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Starting Thursday night, people lined outside the Allentown Fairgrounds Agri-Plex, waiting all night for the doors to open at the MOM-n-PA Dental Mission’s free clinic.<\/p>\n
MOM-n-PA stands for Mission of Mercy of Pennsylvania. This is the 13th clinic they’ve held throughout the state. This year, they chose Allentown for the 3rd time. Organizers said it was due to the needs within the community.<\/p>\n
Dr. Bruce Terry, the Facilities Chair Person for MOM-n-PA said, “We’re excited to have anybody. We do not turn anyone away.”<\/p>\n
Slowly, the crowds made their way in. First, they had to fill out paperwork, then a quick medical check, then to the dental triage, and then x-rays before any procedure.<\/p>\n
“We’re also doing extractions, people that show up here with dental infections. We’re doing root canal treatment, so we offer a myriad of different services to people and we try to do what we can we do as much as we can,” said Dr. Terry. They are also providing a limited number of dentures.<\/p>\n
We met Ailssa Scarpulla waiting for her partial dentures to be complete. She said she got in line at 7:46 p.m. Thursday night, hoping to fix her two missing front teeth.<\/p>\n
“I felt like this was my only chance to feel normal again,” said Scarpulla.<\/p>\n
She is one of what is expected to be over 2,000 people, from children to seniors getting dental care over the course of the two-day clinic. Over 1.2 million dollars’ worth of services is estimated to be provided. It highlights a major dental crisis in our state and country.<\/p>\n
“I have a full-time job I work. I just can’t afford it so I come when they have this,” said Tammy Dannecker, who got in line at 3:30 in the morning.<\/p>\n
Friday morning, organizers invited local legislators to see the need first hand.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of issues that we’re working on, but with legislatures and insurance companies to try to make it affordable, but the problem is it’s just out of the means for some people,” said Dr. Terry.<\/p>\n
Clinics like this will continue; thanks to volunteers. 900 are helping to make this one possible, but organizers say more needed to continue the clinics in the future.<\/p>\n
As for Scarpulla, she got her partial dentures and her smile is now complete.<\/p>\n
“Oh my gosh, now I can smile and not worry about how people are looking at me all weird,” she said as she saw them for the time.<\/p>\n
The clinic continues on Saturday with doors opening at 6:00 AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Starting Thursday night, people lined outside the Allentown Fairgrounds Agri-Plex, waiting all night for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[61345,133217,97,252,253],"class_list":["post-674225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}