This article is from page 10 of the 2006-10-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
TEENAGERS in Clare are waiting up to five years for essential orthodontic services; while those considered less serious are forced to go private or just not have their teeth treated at all.
The HSE Mid West Consultant Orthodontist Ted McNamara places the responsibility for the backlog squarely at the door of the Department of Health and what he describes as vested interests in the dental profession.
Mr McNamara has called for the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children of 2005 to be implemented immediately, so that the teenagers throughout the Mid West can have their teeth treated efficiently.
The committee recommended that a training programme provided by a number of orthodontists in the former Mid Western Health Board that had been stopped, be reinstated immediately.
“These services went under numerous inspections and were the subject of independent assessment and were commented on in glowing terms,” it said.
A review into this service began in April.
Mr McNamara told The Clare People that it was difficult to recruit dentists to the service because no one wanted to work in the public sector. Previously they worked there because they were offered training in orthodontics.
He was appointed consultant to the region in 1985, the first ever, at a time when there was approximately 5,000 children on the waiting list.
“I would have made no inroads into the problem on my own so I got the dentists to help based on an American model where therapists were trained to do some of the routine work.”
This system was replicated in Dublin, Galway and Cork and during the next 14 years proved very successful, according to the head orthodontist.
In 1999 the Mid West orthodontist system won a gold medal for its service beating off competition from orthodontic schools and services throughout Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.
That same year however the orthodontic service changed, as the Irish authorities decided that the training could no longer continue in the same format.
The change has seen the loss of the service in Shannon.
The loss of the dentists in Cork has left teenagers with appliances left without follow-up treatment and exposed to dental rot and gum disease, he said.
There are two other orthodontists working with the consultant in the Mid West with one more to be appointed in North Tipperary in the near future.