Dental care gap is in urgent need of filling

DENTAL health is no less important than any other facet of wellbeing.

It is a mantra we have become accustomed to hearing from ministers, not least since the SNP’s election pledge to abolish dentistry charges.

Yet these words ring hollow in the light of new figures showing some patients are waiting as long as 85 weeks for treatment.

A wait of more than a yearandahalf for a GP appointment would not be acceptable, so why should anyone have to go this length of time to secure dental treatment?

No less shocking is the news that, in some practices elsewhere in the country, appointments for 2022 are already being cancelled in order to tackle the pandemic backlog. Once again, if GP surgeries were doing this, there would be questions in parliament, ministerial statements and crisis talks between the Health Secretary and the British Medical Association.

Particularly troubling are comments by Tom Ferris, Scotland’s chief dental officer, who says certain dental practices are carrying out ‘completely unacceptable’ levels of NHS treatment. He points to some which have not claimed for treating NHS patients at all in the last quarter.

No one doubts the pressure that dentists are under, in particular the ‘fallow time’ during which surgery rooms must be vacated following posttreatment cleaning. These protocols, introduced to reduce the likelihood of Covid19 infection, are a necessary safety measure and will naturally limit the number of patients dentists are able to see.

However, it is alarming that numbers have plummeted to the level they have – and if this is unacceptable to ministers, it is galling to patients. Dental health requires greater parity with general health and the Scottish Government must come forward with proposals to address a mounting crisis in oral care in Scotland.