In Lerwick, in Scotland’s windswept Shetland Islands, just waiting to see the dentist can be as agonising as getting your tooth pulled. Just ask Alec Smales.
”My wife had to wait a year-and-a-half to see a dentist,” he recalled the other day, ”and then she had to wait for another year for her next appointment.”
The Shetland Islands may be off the northern tip of Scotland, but they are very much on the front line of a disturbing shortage of dentists that affects all of Britain.
Just in England alone, there is a shortage of 1 850 dentists, according to government figures. The University of Bath, in a recent study, put the number closer to 5 250.
Two out of 15 dental schools closed their doors in the 1990s, and England — where the lion’s share of people in Britain live — now has one dentist for every 2 700 people, compared with one for every 1 400 people in France.
To compound the problem, more and more dentists are going into private practice, which is more lucrative, instead of working for the state-funded, free-care-for-all National Health Service (NHS).
To see a dentist, without charge, ”on the NHS”, as Britons say, a patient first needs to register — and that’s where the waiting begins.
”You have to wait three years to be registered with a dentist in Lerwick,” said dentist Ian Tinkler as he introduced an Agence France-Presse reporter to his waiting room full of patients. ”The situation is pretty desperate.”
That’s probably the reason why half the inhabitants of the Shetlands are not registered with a dentist, said Mike Collins, who is in charge of dental services on the islands.
That’s the same percentage as in England, where in London most dental clinics no longer take new patients.
Those who are not registered can only see a dentist in the event of an emergency, a dental abscess or unrelenting pain — circumstances potentially brought on by a lack of regular check-ups.
Nursing an inflamed cheek, Denise Dewart (35) qualified as an emergency.
”I’ve been living here for three years,” she said as she waited her turn in the dental chair. ”This is the first time I see a dentist. Everybody complains it is so difficult to get registered.”
For a routine check-up or a filling, the only speedy option is to see a dentist on a private basis — a much more costly option.
Under reforms that came into affect in April last year, patients no longer have to be registered.
”But it won’t make any difference … Dentists will still see the patients they know already,” the British Dental Association has said. ”The only way to improve the situation for patients would be to have more dentists.”
To fill the gap, the Scottish government in Edinburgh — which oversees health care — announced in October that it would bring in 32 dentists from Poland, the biggest of the new European Union member states.
The remote Shetland Islands, for their part, have turned to Germany for help, with some success.
”We advertised in the British Dental Journal, which is on the web,” Collins said. ”A German dentist has applied. We have offered him a post.” — AFP
