Too many seniors lack dental care

The concern by Health Minister Gaétan Barrette and Francine Charbonneau, the minister responsible for seniors, over the quality of retirement homes will most likely not even begin to touch a major problem for many seniors: dental care is unaffordable.

The problem has been recognized recently in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, with two authors recommending public dental care for all of Canada. The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in a study chaired by Paul Allison, dean of the McGill dentistry faculty, outlines barriers to dental care that exist for low-income seniors, and says about six million Canadians avoid dental care each year on account of its cost.

The absence of dental care can lead to infection, heart problems, difficulty in eating healthy foods and even death. Yet rarely is there public discussion of our almost totally for-profit dental care system. It’s time we put an end to this silence. Shloime Perel, Montreal