Source: Dental for All
A national roadshow on access to dental care sets off on its final trip next week – and has confirmed longstanding concerns about barriers to dental care across the country.
Advocacy group Dental for All – backed by dentists, oral health therapists, unions, and frontline service providers – begins a final roadshow through the South Island on Saturday 27 September.
The roadshow has visited 18 towns or centres as part of a journey that has gone so far from the Far North to the East Coast, and from Wellington to Rotorua.
The third and final leg of the roadshow will visit at least 8 further towns and centres from Invercargill to Nelson, meaning the roadshow will have visited at least 26 towns and cities, across some 35 events. Events have included free dental days, community discussions, and marae and school visits.
A strong theme of the roadshow has been an under-resourced under-18s dental service, for which there appears to be little government planning or accountability.
“We have heard story after story about the under-18s service being neglected, particularly in smaller centres, where in some cases we’re hearing mobile dental vans haven’t visited for years,” says Hana Pilkinton-Ching, Dental for All campaigner and spokesperson. “Making dental truly public – building an integrated child, adolescent, and adult community dental service – would improve planning and accountability for the under 18s service, and mean the government has to square up to the fact that oral health is part of general health, and needs urgent attention.”
Across the country, community members have spoken about painful attempts to extract their own teeth because of cost barriers – a cost barrier that the most recent New Zealand Health Survey stops almost half of all New Zealanders from accessing the dental care that they need.
“It’s alarming how often we have heard of people being left to pursue DIY dentistry, because of the prohibitive cost barrier,” says Pilkinton-Ching. “The need is enormous, and the Government knows it, so the longer the Government chooses not to act on dental, the more the Government is condoning the significant suffering people are going through across the country when it comes to oral health.”
Dental for All is calling for the government to implement free, universal dental, delivered consistently with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
When New Zealand’s public healthcare system was established in 1938, some dentists lobbied for the exclusion of dental from the service, though dental care for under-18s is free. That exclusion of dental continues to today.
Research commissioned by Dental for All shows the cost of universal dental, at $1-2bn, is less than what the current exclusion of dental from the public system is costing society, with FrankAdvice research showing that the current approach to dental is costing the country $2.5bn in lost productivity and $3.1bn in reduced quality of life.
In the Far North and on the East Coast local providers have told Dental for All that they are seeking to establish accessible local oral health services because the need is urgent – but there is little or no government support for those measures.
“Local communities and health providers, especially Māori health providers, are seeing the problems in oral health and acting on them by trying to set up local accessible dental services,” says Pilkinton-Ching. “But it shouldn’t be down to local providers to fundraise or volunteer time – this is a nationwide crisis that demands a nationwide solution.”
Major Dental for All community discussions will be held in Dunedin on the evening of Monday 29 September and Christchurch on the evening of Wednesday 1 October, with the roadshow closing with an event in Nelson on the evening of Monday 6 October.
– Hana Pilkinton-Ching and Kayli Taylor are available for interviews. Hana can be contacted on 027 253 4641, and Max Harris can be contacted on 022 426 8939 on background or to arrange interviews.
