Sir, we read with great interest the recent papers on the mobile dental units by Carly Marples and Judith Wright and, most recently, by N. Bradley and A. Evans.1,2 We would like to highlight a similar role played by one of the oldest mobile dental services in North India, led by the Public Health Dentistry department of Christian Dental College and Hospital, Ludhiana, India.

The first mobile dental van for community dental services started functioning as Dental Health Care Service in 1984 (Fig. 1). The mobile dental unit equipped with dental chairs has been providing oral health screening, oral prophylaxis, extractions and school dental health programmes in the state's various remote and isolated regions for over three decades.3 A newer van with three dental chairs replaced the original mobile unit in 2008, which was fully funded by Friends of Ludhiana, a United Kingdom support base for the work centred at the Christian Medical College & Hospital (CMC), Ludhiana.4 The mobile dental unit conducts nearly 165 mobile dental camps per year (Fig. 2). This is in addition to patient care in satellite clinics and department clinics at the hospital. The mobile dental services, in their 38 years of service, have conducted thousands of camps, travelled millions of kilometres, and are a fine example of international collaboration, strong local support, a community-oriented approach, and public involvement in reaching the unreached and vulnerable part of the society for promoting oral healthcare.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The mobile dental van has been in service since 1984

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Patients waiting for their turn in mobile dental services (2017)

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