Many still struggle to get dentist on NHS, admits minister

Published on Tuesday 26 January 2010 21:50

SCOTS in some parts of the country still cannot get access to an NHS dentist, despite rising registrations, new figures have shown.

Public health minister Shona Robison admitted yesterday that finding an NHS dentist was still difficult for people in some areas.

Her comments came as official figures showed more people had registered with a dentist in the past year.

More adults and children were signed up across Scotland by September 2009, compared with three months earlier.

Statistics showed 65.4 per cent of adults were registered with an NHS dentist last September – up by 15.2 percentage points compared with September 2008.

The proportion of children registered was 83 per cent by the end of September last year, up seven points on the previous year.

Ms Robison said: "I am pleased that there have been increases in both child and adult dental registrations in the last quarter.

"However, we know there are still problems with access to an NHS dentist in certain parts of Scotland, and we are continuing to tackle this."

Nine health boards are meeting the target of having 80 per cent of three- to five-year-olds registered with an NHS dentist by 2010-11.

Ms Robison said developing NHS dental services was a priority and ministers had announced 82 million in capital funding last year primarily for that purpose.

"This includes 13 new standalone dental centres across Scotland and two more as part of multi-function health centres," she said.

"We now have outreach training centres in place throughout Scotland, including Aberdeen, Inverness and Dumfries and Galloway, and NHS boards now have the authority to appoint directly salaried dentists."

But Liberal Democrat public health spokesman Jamie Stone said there was "an unfortunate inequality", and improvements in registration could not mask a "crisis" in some places.