Decay

In the Sunday Express, the justly ubiquitous Neil Clark writes:

It started with a chicken drumstick. I was chewing away quite happily on a bone dipped in delicious barbecue sauce when, oh dear, my upper right tooth cracked and bits started coming out. 

It wasn’t in the best of shape beforehand but it was the bone that delivered the killer blow. A sharp piece of tooth remained, digging into the inside of my cheek. It was all very painful, even after taking paracetamol. So what to do?

I am not registered with a dentist so I called NHS Direct on an 0845 number and was asked several questions. I was told that my local NHS emergency dental centre would call me back shortly and arrange a time within the next six hours when a dentist could see me. About an hour later, after I had paid an £18 fee, I was lying in the dentist’s chair ready for treatment.

“Open wide and relax your tongue,” the dentist said. She began to get a bit snappy, in a good humoured way, as I clearly wasn’t opening wide enough or relaxing my tongue sufficiently.

“I can see you’re out of practice,” she said. “When’s the last time you had a dental check up?”

The answer was several years ago. In fact so long ago I couldn’t remember.

Like many others I can’t afford to pay for private treatment and there’s a paucity of NHS dentistry locally.

Waiting lists are long. Last autumn I called a dentist who does NHS work and was told to call back in the spring. When I called back they said to call again in a few months.

The dentist put a temporary filling over my cracked tooth and also pointed out that the tooth in front of it was cracked too. My teeth are in a poor state.

That’s what comes from not going to the dentist.

But I’m not alone in this. In the 24-month period leading up to March 2013, 43.9 per cent of people in England didn’t see the dentist.

How did we get to this stage?

When I was growing up in the Seventies it seemed that everyone went for regular check-ups.

Living in Northwest London my family and I used to go to a dental surgeon called Mr Mistlin who lived just down the road from us. He could be quite forbidding as I remember, as dentists of that era tended to be, but the important thing was he treated us all on the NHS and my father didn’t need to take out a bank loan in order to have our teeth filled.

I kept going to the dentist regularly up until the Nineties when my local practice, like many others in Britain, stopped treating NHS patients.

The Government cut the fees they paid to dentists who did NHS work by seven per cent, leaving many to concentrate purely on private work. The situation got even worse with the growth of private dental chains which didn’t take on any NHS patients.

For governments, whether Conservative or Labour, supporting NHS dentistry no longer seemed to be all that important.

In November 2004 a report revealed that whereas there had been a general 75 per cent increase in overall NHS spending per head of population since 1990/1, the increase in spending on NHS dental services was only nine per cent.

The full extent of the damage caused by the decline of affordable dental care became apparent.

In 2008 it was revealed that more than 11 million British adults couldn’t afford to go to the dentist and more than half the population had teeth missing.

All this in one of the richest countries in the world.

Things have hardly improved since then. The percentage of people seeing a dentist in England in the two years up to March 2013 is just 0.3 per cent up from March 2006.

The percentage of children seeing a dentist is actually down. Earlier this week it was reported that over three-quarters of NHS dentists in Greater Manchester were refusing to take on new patients, meaning people having to travel long distances to find affordable care.

Why should it be so difficult?

If we could afford a comprehensive system of NHS dentistry up to the early Nineties, why can’t we now? And if NHS medical treatment is free at point of use, why isn’t dental care?

Our politicians today seem to prefer focusing on international affairs rather than on “bread and butter” or, rather, “tooth and gum” issues at home.

I would rather they prioritise on restoring NHS dentistry so that everyone has access to good quality dental care.

Thirty-odd years ago the only thing we feared when we had toothache was the dentist’s drill, not the damage to our wallets.

Until those happy days return, take very good care as you chew those chicken bones.