DENTAL staff from The High Street Dentist Practice in Chippenham are fundraising to improve smiles out in Uganda this September.

Hygienist Claire Hart-Ramsey, 50, and dental nurses Alex Kettlety, 21, and Trudi Maidment, 43, will spend two weeks in Africa with Dentaid, a charity fighting for world oral health.

The three ladies need to raise £2,000 each to be able to go on the trip and make a real difference to adults and children's dental health.

Mrs Maidment said: "I wanted to do voluntary work and I thought the best place to start was what we know so I collared Alex into it too.

"We googled some volunteer work for dentistry and came up with Dentaid. We got in contact with them, had a meeting with a lady from there and decided let's do it."

The first DentaidBox, a portable dental surgery complete with a chair that can be operated without access to water or electricity, was sent to Uganda in 2012 and they are now being used in countries all over the world.

Miss Kettlety said: "It's mainly relieving people of pain and going into schools and educating children too. We'll be going around to different areas and setting up our own clinic. The dentist who we are going with, has been doing it for 20 years.

"It was a spur of the moment thing but I am really looking forward to it."

To help raise the necessary funds to make the trip a success, the three ladies have already completed the 3km Bath Mud Run and are in training for the Corsham 10k in April.

Mrs Maidment said: "The Bath Run was hard, wet, cold and very muddy but fun. It was harder than what we were expecting. I have always wanted to do volunteer work but I have never found something I have wanted to do then we found out about this place."

The trio will be holding an 80s night at the Chippenham Consti Club on April 23 with tickets costing £5 to raise funds.

To support the ladies bring a smile to Africa visit: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/alexandtrudi