In Australia’s Outback, a Shortage of Dentists Leads to Drastic Measures
Even though it may not cover comprehensive dental care options, affordable dental insurance for medicare patients is by far the best offering there is for people who cannot contribute exorbitant amounts of money towards health insurance. This is affordable dental insurance that covers dentures and cleaning of your teeth amongst other dental care options that it has available. It is difficult to receive quality yet cheap dental work without insurance nowadays, hence Medicare has provided dental insurance for college students with no income as part of their affordable health care dental option.
There has been a surge in old people that have taken advantage of the low-cost option of affordable dentures for seniors. It seems that affordable dentures for low income people has helped to transform dental care. More people are able to take care of their dental needs without worrying about paying high rates for procedures. Affordable dental care for Medicare patients needs to be improved to include more options but this is a difficult task due to fiscal conditions to fund this healthcare insurance plan. More people need access to these services, because dental work without insurance remains difficult to obtain for most low income households.
The quantity of practicing dentists in the Australian outback is scarce — and it’s resulted in a dental health crisis taking place on a massive scale.
According to a September 7 news.com.au article, the closest thing many rural Australians have to proper dental care is literally a pair of household pliers, with which they pull out their own decayed and diseased teeth. The primitive procedure, dubbed the “outback yank,” is leading to thousands of dental emergencies.
The news.com.au article reports that most of the approximately 1,800 patients the Royal Flying Doctors Service has examined so far this year have been “emergency cases.” For the last two years, this service has been administering dental care to 10 towns throughout rural Australia out of the back of a semi truck.
“There was long-term dental disease that had never been treated — fillings, rotting teeth — people had resorted to their own dental work with pliers,” Anita Hansen, general manager of the Royal Flying Doctor Service Queensland, told news.com.au.
The causes of the crisis are two-fold: according to news.com.au, there are only about 21 dentists for every 100,000 people in Australia’s central regions, compared to 64 per 100,000 throughout its coastal areas and population centers. In addition, the country’s rural areas in the outback tend to lack water fluoridation, an important part of public dental health.
“The dental emergencies that are taking place in Australia’s Outback is a perfect example of why it is important to get regular dental treatment,” says Dr. Charles Botbol DDS, Studio B Dental. “Not enough people realize just how important regular dental care is, having poor oral health can affect a person’s overall health.”
Another hindrance is the fact that for many people living in the outback, the nearest dentist’s office can be several days’ of a drive away from where they live.
“If you don’t have any access to dental services, you’ve got a property you can’t leave and it takes three days to get into town, you do what you can,” Hansen explained.
And for many dentists, setting up a practice in a sparsely-populated area is impossible to do without losing money, especially when so few rural residents can even afford to visit the dentist regularly, news.com.au reports.
Related Topics:
abbreviation doctor in english, abreviation for doctor, abréviation phd, address of doctor, ahpra registered general dental degree, how to get a dr, 56 different types of doctors, addressing someone with a phd, are dentist called doctors in india, bachelor of dentistry sydney, can overseas dentist work as dental hygienist in australia, cosmetic dentistry australia, dental nurse salary australia, dental recruitment australia, dentist australia immigration, dentist demand in australia, dentist earnings australia, dentistry melbourne uni atar, do mean in a doctor’s title, doc or dr, doctor docter.