Origination of DHIN

The founder of DHIN is the Dutch dentist Ruud Karsten. When still being a student of dentistry, at the annual congress of the International Association of Dental Students (IADS) in Turku (Finland) in 1973, he met the American dentist Barry Simmons, who at that time was the director of Dental Health International (DHI), an organisation established by Simmons himself. The main objective of this organisation was to assist in improving oral health and oral health care in developing countries. First of all he did so by visiting and working himself under less-privileged people in countries in Latin-America. Later on he went to the Middle-East and to the African region for the same purpose. For traveling and transport of equipment and materials in these countries, Simmons used local means of transport and local people. In the Middle-East countries with their deserts, he rode on camels, and in Africa, as a kind of Livingstone, he went by feet, in a long caravan of local inhabitants who carried the boxes with dental instruments with him. Later Simmons took a lead in the development of appropriate dental equipment for developing countries, and he encouraged senior dental students to follow his footsteps into the Third World. A fourth means to realize the objectives of his organisation was the raising of funds for dental trainees from developing countries.

In 1974 Karsten took the initiative for the establishment of a Working Group of dentists and dental students in the Netherlands, having a similar objective as with the American sister organisation. In Het Nederlands Tandartsenblad (the official journal of the main society of dentists in the Netherlands), he wrote several papers about his meeting with Barry Simmons, and proposed to undertake similar activities in the Netherlands. He called for dental collegues and dental students to participate in the envisaged working group. Dentist Ben Witte and oral surgeon Herman Meijnen were the first collegues to reply, and to show their interest in Karsten's ideas. The first dental students to join the working group were Hiepke Boerma and Paul van der Crabben. Actually Karsten, together with Boerma and Van der Crabben, as a student yet had already started to investigate the possibilities of undertaking dental activities in Kenya, Africa. Their Rokoboom-project at the University of Amsterdam College of Dentistry in 1972 for raising of funds for a roman catholic missionfather and his school of deaf children in Kenya, could actually be considered the very beginning of DHIN's historical development. Regular meetings of the Working Group initially took place at the Meijnen House in Harmelen, situated in the centre of The Netherlands, near Utrecht.

After a short stay and employment of Karsten as a dentist in a mission hospital in Malawi (Central Africa) in 1975, it was decided to change the Working Group into an official Foundation. On 6th of March, 1976, Dental Health International Netherlands (DHIN) was launched, with Ben Witte being the first chairman, and Herman Meijnen as the secretary and treasurer. The name of the new Foundation was purposely taken over from the American sister organisation DHI. This was agreed upon by Barry Simmons himself. The additional letter "N" (for Netherlands) at the end was to indicate of course that DHI and DHIN were different organisations, situated in different countries, and with different ways of handling matters.

Being the initial founder of the DHIN-organisation Karsten took over chairmanship from Witte soon after March, 1976. Witte became secretary, which task he continued to fulfil for almost twentyfive years consecutively. Karsten chaired DHIN until July, 1981, when he departed for a three year stay in Tanzania, and handed over chairmanship to Fons Veraart.