Disadvantaged paying for poverty with their teeth

Prof  Jonathan Broadbent believes more could be done to promote dental equality between rich and...
Prof Jonathan Broadbent believes more could be done to promote dental equality between rich and poor, with people from disadvantaged backgrounds losing six times as many teeth due to decay by their late 30s. Photo: Gregor Richardson
More needs to be done to close  the gap between rich and poor when it comes to dental work, an Otago academic says.

Faculty of Dentistry Associate Prof  Jonathan Broadbent, who won the Liley Medal last year from the Health Research Council of New Zealand for his research on dental inequality, said dentists were acting as "the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff".

Emergency grants from Work and Income were arriving  too late.

Findings from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study back in 2012 revealed that by  38 years old, people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds on average lost six times as many teeth to decay as people from wealthier backgrounds.

Prof Broadbent said while urgent dental grants of $300 were available from Work and Income, what was needed was more preventive treatment and treatment to remedy cavities before they became serious.

"Some patients have not been to the dentist in forever," he said.

Prof Broadbent said untreated decay could be "very uncomfortable" for the patient, but shame, fear and a lack of money could stop people seeking help. Data from the Dunedin Study, which follows a cohort of more than 1000 people from birth, showed at the age of 18 people from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds were about the same in terms of the treatment they received. 

However, when they were no longer eligible for free dentistry the difference between the two groups began to climb.

The tooth loss described in the study included people who had their teeth extracted by a dentist, as well as people whose teeth had gradually rotted away, Prof Broadbent said. Dentists did not see people on emergency grants until they urgently needed work,  and then they were acting as surgeons rather than "dental physicians", he said.

Messages such as having a better diet, brushing teeth regularly, and having regular checkups were very important, but often they did not  reach  the people who needed them the most.

Prof Broadbent said he supported having tax removed from dental care products and funding preventive work for at-risk groups, and a tax on sugary drinks also "deserves to be given a chance".

People in their mid-20s were an example of a good group to target for check-ups, as they had often left study and might have families, but were usually not well-established in their professions.

"Most untreated tooth decay is present in the mouths of [people in their 20s]," he said.

Prof Broadbent said the emergency grants had been the same since he started  practising as a dentist, and Ministry for Social Development client delivery general group manager Kay Read confirmed on Tuesday the figure of $300 was set in 1996.

However, the Work and Income New Zealand website said people could be given more, depending on their situation. There were 39,798 special needs grants given out for dental work in 2017 totalling $11,026,688, with a further 28,688 "advance grants" worth $14,711,933 in total given for dental work.

On average, each special needs grants was $277, and each advance grant was $513.  

Comments

When I was young I ate too many sweets and got too many fillings.
Dentists are very expensive and i held off going.
But recently i got several implants in India by a very highly qualified implantologist at a few $100 each rather that 10 times that much in NZ

 

Advertisement