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Speaker 1: New data around dental health. Past two years, an extra

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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred kids under fourteen have been added to our

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Speaker 1: witless for dental surgery. Now that's nearly three thousand have

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Speaker 1: been waiting more than one hundred and twenty days. Apparently.

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Speaker 1: Robin Wyman's at the New Zealand Dental Association and as

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Speaker 1: with us, Robin morning to you morning MIKEE. Is the

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Speaker 1: school system not working?

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Speaker 2: The school or what used to be called the school

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Speaker 2: dental service, the community oral health service is in some difficulty.

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Speaker 2: It is short of therapists, that's dental therapists and oral

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Speaker 2: health therapists. They're the key clinician you need to deliver

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Speaker 2: that service and so with the work force shortage, they

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Speaker 2: are very behind in terms of seeing our pre and

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Speaker 2: primary school children.

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Speaker 1: Is this a geography problem? There are certain areas we

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Speaker 1: can point to and know that this is where the

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Speaker 1: issues are.

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Speaker 2: It is a nationwide problem, but there are pockets where

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Speaker 2: the numbers have been very very behind. To Auckland and

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Speaker 2: Waikato we know from the data are more behind than many.

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Speaker 2: But actually a nationwide problem really.

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Speaker 1: And I emphasize the word surgery. So what is it

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Speaker 1: you're getting done for surgery apart from extraction.

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Speaker 2: So young children who would be going to hospitals or

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Speaker 2: theaters across the country to have their teeth attended to,

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Speaker 2: a lot of the work would be dental extractions because

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Speaker 2: the teeth are past the point where we can repair them.

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Speaker 2: But we also do a lot of fillings, a lot

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Speaker 2: of repairing those teeth so we can hold onto them,

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Speaker 2: and they are important to hang on to where we

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Speaker 2: can because they help the developing permanent teeth.

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Speaker 1: Strikes me as one of those things that you can

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Speaker 1: potentially address to it, agree if you got hold of

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Speaker 1: the parents and we started off doing it at home.

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Speaker 1: So in other words, you know, diet you may or

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Speaker 1: may not get ahead on, but dentistry is sort of

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Speaker 1: easily sold to the kid brushes their teeth on a

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Speaker 1: regular basis.

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Speaker 2: Isn't it no doubt that rutbrushing teeth with fluoridated toothpaste

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Speaker 2: twice a day. That's our absolute recommendation from the association

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Speaker 2: is an important part of this. And so yes, early

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Speaker 2: contact with parents and understanding of what needs to be

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Speaker 2: done to look after dental health is a very important

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Speaker 2: part of preventing this disease.

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Speaker 1: Is that being done clearly not.

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Speaker 2: Obviously, it's so difficult. We have not just the therapist

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Speaker 2: delivering that service. Plunket and the early childhood providers do

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Speaker 2: provide that level of support and help to our young children,

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Speaker 2: but with workforce shortages, absolutely those contacts are not as

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Speaker 2: frequent as they should be.

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Speaker 1: Is anyone fixing this? Dentistry has always been a problem,

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Speaker 1: hasn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is slightly different to the wider dentistry issues

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Speaker 2: that we talk about because this is the publicly funded

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Speaker 2: part of the service and both in the community oral

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Speaker 2: health service and then what we're doing in the hospitals.

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Speaker 2: There is some glimmer of understanding in the Health New

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Speaker 2: Zealand workforce plans. So if you look at the twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty three and twenty twenty four plans, they do talk

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Speaker 2: about the shortage they have a viral health therapists. It's

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Speaker 2: around about twenty percent in the two thousand and three

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Speaker 2: plane twenty three plan. With this is it's not joined up, Mike.

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Speaker 2: They have Health New Zealand saying they have shortages, but

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Speaker 2: you've got to then be working across into the tertiary

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Speaker 2: education sector with them being supported with additional funding and

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Speaker 2: a joined up plan so we actually train more therapists

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Speaker 2: and more dentists, so it's.

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Speaker 1: Not it's not coordinated. Who would have Who would have

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Speaker 1: thought that? Appreciate it Robin Robin wym in New Zealand

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Speaker 1: Dental Association.

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