PRISONERS with toothache are receiving emergency dental care within hours behind bars, a report reveals.
The lags’ treatment is in sharp contrast to law-abiding citizens who are yanking their own teeth out as they face three-year NHS waiting lists.
Inspectors at one jail found it had two dental clinics working four days a week and extra surgeries at weekends.
The report by the prisons watchdog into Holme House prison in Co Durham says: “Emergency treatment was available within two days and the GP also prescribed emergency treatment.”
Last month, Shawn Charlwood, of the British Dental Association had warned: “NHS dentistry’s survival is not a forgone conclusion.”
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In 2018-19, NHS dentists performed 39.7m dental “courses of treatment” but by 2021-22, this had fallen to just 26.6m, a decline of 34%.
The result has been that the backlog has ballooned with 11 million people now waiting to see an NHS dentist.
Lockdowns during the pandemic saw the number of working NHS dentists fall by 4% which means over 1,000 dentists have been lost since 2019.