Innovative mobile dental service offers help to those struggling to find dental care

While controversy abounds in Australia regarding government plans to dramatically change how Medicare will manage dental care, in the UK an enterprising group of dentists from Hungary and Germany are offering a unique dental service.

Armed with a fully equipped, inflatable dental surgery the dentists plan to tour the country offering treatments to those struggling to find dental care.

The £25,000 mobile surgery complete with dentist chair, X-ray machines and hi-tech equipment will travel around the UK, visiting cities including London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, offering consultations and X-rays.

The scheme aims to demonstrate the level of service the group provide in Hungary in order to encourage patients to travel to eastern Europe where they can get major dental procedures such as dental implants, at less than half the cost of the UK.

The initiative follows recent government figures which revealed that changes in the NHS dental system could make it harder for patients to access care.

Even though it has been forecast that an excess of 80 million dental treatments will be needed in England in the coming year, 3.7 million have not yet been provided for by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) who contract dentists to carry them out.

The inflatable dental surgery is the brainchild of Hungarian Dental Travel, a company set up four years ago which arranges for Britons to travel to Hungary for dental treatment.

The company deals with more than 20 patients a month and managing director Chris Hall says the inflatable surgery would start its seven day "tour" on Thursday.

Mr Hall says if affordable treatment was available in the UK people would not need to travel overseas for it and says they meet many people unable to afford to pay for treatments in Britain or who are unhappy with the standard of care offered.

Mr Hall says the mobile surgery aims to attract as wide an audience as possible and means patients can find out what treatment they will need and what the likely cost will be before they travel.

He says the dentists are all very highly trained, are using the latest equipment and are licensed by the general medical council.

The PVC structure took 12 months to develop and the equipment has been modified to cope with its transitory surroundings such as using lead perspex imported from Japan and a portable shield to stop the radiation beam.

According to some dentists the scheme in jeopardy of being dumped by the Australian Government helps many disadvantaged patients and they would not be better served under a dental Medicare scheme.

Critics say the current scheme will be replaced with a broader-based scheme largely reliant on student-staffed public dental clinics.

They say such a scheme is more likely to benefit wealthier patients.

At present in order to qualify for major dentistry, including dentures totalling up to $4,250, patients must have a chronic illness as well as dental problems affecting, or likely to affect, their general health.

Recent research found that almost one in five Australians say they don’t have access to a dentist because they can’t afford it and almost a third say they can’t afford an annual check-up for their children.

The research also revealed a clear link between low income, infrequent visits to a dentist, and poor dental health.

The replacement scheme promises to enable people to have serious conditions addressed under revived federal funding of $780 million over four years compared with $50 million in the past four years.

Most European countries provide free dental care for children but while Australian states operate a federally funded school dental service for children, these dental programs are not well funded and many families say they cannot afford annual check-ups for their children.

Researchers say Australia’s public dental policies are the most limited of the rich democracies, are clearly under strain and fail to provide comprehensive free treatment for children.

According to the World Health Organisation Australia and Britain both have one dentist for every 2,300 citizens.

In Sweden which has one for every 1,200 almost half the dental profession work in the public sector.

An expanded public dental scheme in Australia would quite simply also need more dentists.