NHS dental service in crisis (From Western Telegraph)

NHS dental service in crisis

NHS dental services in Pembrokeshire remain in crisis. No practices in the county are currently accepting NHS patients and anyone moving to Pembrokeshire will have difficulty in registering for NHS dentistry.

The desperation of patients in west Wales was highlighted recently when 600 people queued outside a Carmarthen practice in a bid to be one of 300 patients accepted for NHS treatment. Some had camped overnight.

Despite recent attempts to ease the situation in Pembrokeshire - with new NHS surgeries in Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Saundersfoot, and also one across the border in St Clears - there is still a huge problem.

"What happens is that as soon as we get a new dentist, another retires and we do not increase our pool of NHS dentists. At this moment no dentist in Pembrokeshire will accept new NHS dentists, with the possible exception of children of parents already registered," explained Stuart Moncur, Pembrokeshire Health Board's director of planning and primary care.

"We recently announced that 1,000 patients were being taken off the waiting list in Milford Haven. But we chose to do it in a way which avoided people having to queue the way they did in Carmarthen."

Incentive grants of £50,000 for new NHS dentists to move into parts of county were introduced.

But there is still difficulty in drawing NHS dentists to the county, despite the fact that Pembrokeshire is one of the most attractive parts of Wales. They tend to go for the more affluent parts of the country where they can make more money doing private work. Mr Moncur said that the Local Health Board and the Pembrokeshire and Derwen NHS Trust were continually looking at options to increase NHS dentists in the area.