Study: New Zeeland Pupils Refuse the Dentist

A study of Christchurch pupil in NZ shows that despite the fact that many youngsters have access to free dental healthcare, they still have unhealthy teeth and gums.

The Lane project tested pupils in Linwood college, and the result was that ¾ of them need immediate dental care.

According to Alan Parris, who is the leader of the project, the entire stuff considers the situation shocking, given the fact that all kids up to the age of 18 have access to quality dental care, yet a great number of these pupil need emergency oral health care.

Even though pupils have been told that oral services are for free, they would not show up for their appointments. They were taken to the designated dental offices in mini buses to have their treatments.

A local dental surgery office has agreed to close up for a week, in order to treat pupils.

For each enrolled student under the age of 18, dentists have been receiving a flat fee, which would have been enough to cover for a dental checkup and a treatment.

However, this fee many times did not cover all the costs, so basically dentists were losing money and did not wish to enroll them in the program for this reason.

According to Patrick Walsh, who is the president of the Secondary Principals Association of New Zeeland, bad oral health is a great problem especially in schools, and more specifically in areas where there was no fluoridated water existent.

For example, children younger than 10 years old had to go through root canal therapies in Rotorua region, exactly because of this.

If dentists are few, it means that waiting lists get longer, and since young children did not pay the same amount for treatments as adults did, dentists did not want to enroll children in the program.

On the other hand, youngsters do not enjoy very much the idea of going for regular checkups at the dentist’s.

The Lane study further revealed that several children would not have their meals regularly. For example, out of those questioned, 1/3 stated they had no breakfast at all, while as much as 21% stated they did not have lunch.