Lakewood Lore

Dentist works to help poor in El Salvador

Looking to put something back into the world in return for the blessings he feels he has received, Lakewood dentist Thomas G. Jacobs recently took his tools and talents to the slums of El Salvador in Central America.

There, he treated, without charge, impoverished pain-plagued inhabitants, most of whom live in corrugated metal or cardboard shacks, and have never before seen a dentist.

"Their teeth are very bad," said Dr. Jacobs. "It appears there is no dental care for he poor, who make up about 90 percent of the population."

The doctor saw his patients in a bus converted into a mobile clinic. He brought with him enough Novocain for about 150 sufferers, using it mostly for those in severe pain who needed extractions.

Assisting him in his mission of mercy was his wife Mary Ann, who flew down to El Salvador with him on Continental Airlines.

A former employee of a veterinarian's office in Cleveland, Mary Ann Jacobs observed that the teeth of the patients were worse than any she had ever seen.

"And, in many cases during our week-long stay, we didn't see teeth; we saw only roots," she added.

El Salvador is the smallest and most thickly populated country in the Americas, with about 5.5 million people in an area roughly the size of Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined. The name is Spanish for "The Savior."

Most of its inhabitants are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood with straight black hair, the doctor pointed out. Many get their living from the soil and nearly all are Catholic.

The country is a tropical republic whose chief exports are coffee and sugar. Tourists often visit its beaches and volcanoes outside of its capital, where there is a mosaic of natural beauty.

However, in the slums (called barrios), it's a different story. Those beset by the ravages of poverty appear to be only one meal away from starvation, according to Dr. Jacobs.

"Jobs are scarce and wages very low," he said. "Cows, with ribs showing, roam the streets eating garbage. Children seem especially deprived. We never saw a baby doll or other toys, and there appeared to be no books, radios or TV.

"A macho image prevails among the men, with women not highly regarded. And posing a threat at night are roving bands of robbers, known as bandidos.

"The bandidos have to steal to live, and thus feel justified in what they do," is the way the doctor put it.

The couple's visit was a two-hop plane trip -- from here to Houston, and then to San Salvador's airport, a modest one that reminded them of Burke Lakefront.

They stayed in a hotel in the capital, a city of 1.5 million, then traveled by bus each morning to the outlying slums, where the doctor had arranged to use a mobile clinic furnished by an interdenominational and interdependent organization called Buses International.

Headed by Norman R. Beetler in Amherst, Ohio, it has built similar clinics for various missionaries and ministries to provide charitable medical and dental services to the indigent in Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti.

Jacobs wouldn't venture a guess as to when conditions in the slums of El Salvador will improve.

"The situation looks hopeless," he said with a shrug.

The doctor, who made a similar working mission at his own expense to war-torn Bosnia in 1995, and who may go to Honduras next year, and that, "If Lakewoodites could see the poverty and destitution in El Salvador, our churches would be bulging with thankful people praising the Lord for our own lot in life."

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post March 13, 1997. Reprinted with permission.

More Lakewood Lore