A mother who could not get a dentist appointment for her young daughter was forced to end her toothache by yanking one out with pliers.
People across the UK have been left in agony as they struggle to see their dentists who has stopped taking new NHS patients. Some Brits were forced to take matters into their own hands and travelled abroad for help - while others have taken a more dramatic route and resorted to ending their pain by forcibly removing their own teeth.
Scott Benton, MP for Blackpool, told the House of Commons about the desperate plight of one of his constituents, the BBC reported. He said: “Only last week, a mother attended my surgery who had to physically remove the teeth of her six-year-old daughter with pliers because she was in so much pain and could not access the treatment her family needed.
"As the NHS dentistry recovery plan is long overdue, would it be in order for the House to receive a ministerial statement on when we may finally see some progress on this issue?" Labour's shadow health minister, Preet Kaur Gill, described a case of someone called Emma who was unable to access NHS dentistry in their own town. She was forced to go to hospital to have wisdom teeth removed.
Health minister Dame Andrea Leadsom told the Commons an NHS dentistry recovery plan is coming "very soon". She said: “I absolutely understand the challenge for some people. The situation has improved over the last year. Since the Covid pandemic, where almost every dentist had to stop working altogether, we have not seen the recovery we want to see and we are putting in plans, not a paper ambition like the members opposite have put forward, but some really significant reforms to enable many more people to be seen by NHS dentists."
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Earlier this week it was reported millions of patients fed up with waiting to see their NHS dentists have given up waiting for appointments, according to new data. A yearly survey of patients on their experience trying to get an appointment showed 19% said they did not try to make an NHS dental appointment in the last two years. Of those, 22% said it was because they did not think they would be able to get one. The number is up from 18% in 2022, and 13% in 2021.
But between 2013 and 2020, around 93% of patients who tried to make an appointment with an NHS dentist in the previous two years had managed to do so. Only around 5% said they had been unable to get an appointment. The cost of hospitals amid a collapse in access to NHS dentistry in the past five years. NHS spent £81million on child extractions in 2021/22, the latest government figures show.
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