Advocacy group calls for free dental care as families prioritise food and rent
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123RF
Dozens of people at a public meeting in Wellington have told of the desperate efforts they or others have taken trying to get dental treatment for rotting teeth.
Advocacy group 'Dental for All' is taking its urgent message for free, universal dental care around the country - kicking off its roadshow this week.
The group points to recent reports which found that
40 percent of New Zealanders cannot afford dental care
and that the current
dental system is costing the country billions of dollars annually
in lost productivity and social impacts.
Roadshow speaker and Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) coordinator Agnes Magele spoke of the numerous hoops she'd had to jump through in the past to try and get the government dental grant - describing the process as dehumanising and humiliating.
Magele said she still needed treatment and was currently in pain, but could not afford to get her teeth fixed.
"I have half a broken tooth on one side, and other side I have the same ... I had to yank one of my teeth out by myself.
"At the moment I have a gum infection, but I haven't been to do anything about it and I'm working through it. I have to."
She said it was tough, but she could not afford to take a day off and had to prioritise her kids and her bills over her teeth.
"It's hard, it's really hard. I have to put my oral health last, and everything else first."
Magele said her job involved campaigning on behalf of others, but losing teeth meant she had lost some of her confidence.
She said free dental care would be liberating and would help restore that.
Those at Tuesday night's meeting in Wellington told RNZ about how they found themselves avoiding the dentist after turning 18 because the cost was too high.
One person said he put off visiting the dentist for a decade.
"It costs a heck of a lot of money ... so it wasn't a priority. But in that time, stuff stacks up."
Another person, a doctor, said she had seen many severe "downstream effects" of untreated dental health, such as brain and heart infections.
"It's very debilitating at the least and deadly at the most, for something so preventable."
A teacher said despite access to free dental treatment, she still saw the shame around teeth for some of the kids she taught - and also for whanau.
"You see it in families, in parents that don't want to come to parent-teacher interviews because they're whakamā or ashamed about what their smile might look like or how they communicate."
Oral health therapist and speaker on Tuesday's panel, Lateisha Chant, specialised in dental care for tamariki/children, but said nearly every day in her clinic a parent would ask her for help.
"They'll say, 'I haven't been to the dentist in so long, I just can't afford it, I know that I've got holes, I've had this tooth that's been really sore.'"
She said often these whanau members would put up with painful decay, putting food and rent ahead of treatment.
"That's the reality for so many people that I come across and also within my own family growing up."
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