14 May 2004
England and Wales need an extra 5,200 dentists if NHS dental services are to meet western standards, researchers said this week.
A study published in the International Journal of Health Geographics found that, on average, the NHS has fewer than four dentists for every 10,000 people. This compares with five per 10,000 in Austria, Poland and Italy and six in the US.
Guy Picton Phillipps from Brent Primary Care Trust and Maged Kamel Boulos from Bath University studied the distribution of dentists throughout the 304 primary care trusts in England and the 22 local health boards in Wales. They rated each area red, amber or green according to the ratio of dentists to population density.
'Suitable programmes are urgently needed to increase the number of NHS dentists across England and Wales,' the researchers said. As a short-term solution, they suggested redeploying dentists to areas with the severest shortage.
The Department of Health dismissed concerns, saying there were almost 4,000 more NHS dentists working in England than in 1992. 'This study does not include community dentists or dentists based in hospitals, which account for a further 3,763 dentists,' a spokeswoman said.
Dental services in other countries are not comparable with the NHS, she added.
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