A DENTIST from York is preparing to travel to Cambodia to work with a charity which provides vital dental treatment in some of the world’s most disadvantaged countries.

Dr Yordan Dimitrov, who works at the IDH dental practice at Clifton Moor, has previously volunteered in Tanzania and Morocco, where he helped provide primary dental care in areas where people would not normally be able to get it.

Yordan, 39, who comes from Sofia, in Bulgaria, qualified as a dentist in 2000 at the Medical University there.

He moved to the UK in 2008 and has been living and working as a general dental practitioner in York ever since. His parents still live in Bulgaria and his younger sister is an architect who lives in France.

Yordan said: “I first became involved with charity work abroad in 2011. A nurse at the practice was saying one day at lunch how she was saving money to go to Tanzania. That’s how I learned about Bridge2Aid. They operate different programs in the country, based in Mwanza, a city on the southern shore of Lake Victoria.

“I went there for two weeks in November 2011, working as a general dentist in a practice called Hope Dental Centre. As part of the work, I travelled to three different gold mines in the north of Tanzania with whom Bridge2Aid had a contract to provide dental services on the ground.”

In 2013, Yordan went to El Jadida, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, on a trip organised by another charity, Dentaid.

There he worked in a centre for children with special needs and also visited three schools in rural communities, setting up portable surgeries.

In November this year, Yordan will be travelling with a Dentaid team which will work in orphanages, schools and prisons in Phnom Penh and outlying rural areas.

He said: “Travelling for charity is very different than being an ordinary tourist.

“You get to experience how people actually live. You take for granted a lot of things and when you see people struggling without them every day, you can fully appreciate what you have in your country.”

To find out more about Dentaid, visit www.dentaid.org, and to help sponsor Yordan’s Cambodia trip, go to mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/yordan.