hand-over of mobile dental clinics, Germiston Hospital
21 August 2006
The Gauteng Oral Health Strategy states that âBasic health and social
services are a human rightâ and oral health is a significant component of that
right.
Most oral diseases are not life-threatening, but these diseases affect
almost every individual during his or her lifetime, resulting in pain,
discomfort, expenditure for treatment, loss of school days, productivity, work
hours, and to some degree of social stigma.
Oral conditions are important public health problems because of their high
prevalence, their severity, and the public demand for services due to their
impact on individuals and society. Millions of work and schooldays are lost
annually due to conditions associated with dental pain.
During the recent visit by the Deputy Minister of Health to Gauteng, Ms
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, she explicitly raised the matter of utilising Mobile
Dental Clinics in Gauteng as part of the African Regional Strategy to promote
access to oral health services.
Gauteng has been the leader for over three decades in oral healthcare
service delivery innovations and is proud to contribute to this intervention.
In 2005, 221 000 people were attended to in various facilities for dental
problems in Gauteng.
The total number of people who received dentures in 2005 was 4 600, and 1
084 of whom were either indigent or pensioners. This has been made possible by
a conscious decision to allocate a special fund to reduce the dental surgical
backlog.
In pursuit of this intervention, the Gauteng Department of Health has made a
ground breaking initiative in acquiring four state-of-the-art, new generation
high-tech mobile dental clinics for deployment in districts to strengthen the
district oral health services.
These mobile dental clinics cost R550 230 00 each including equipment,
totalling R2 220 930,00.
Oral health services are expensive due to the high cost of equipment and
materials, and for this reason cannot be provided at every primary healthcare
facility in the district.
These mobile clinics will be mounted on moveable carriages, such as trucks.
These mobile clinics will be deployed initially at Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng, and
West Rand. These are the areas that deserve urgent intervention in terms of
Oral Health Services.
The provision of basic oral healthcare services, consisting of preventive
and promotive services and a basic treatment service can be provided from a
mobile dental clinic, where there are no fixed clinics or where a primary
healthcare clinic does not have a dental facility for the community it
serves.
In order to improve the present level of oral healthcare service delivery,
and, where necessary, to develop and expand the services in a cost efficient
and effective manner, a mobile dental clinic is ideal to meet the needs of the
community.
Mobile dental clinics are also used for visiting schoolchildren to undertake
a specialised clinical programme known as Atraumatic Restorative Technique
(ART). They are useful to cover those areas where people would not otherwise
have access to oral health services.
In Gauteng Province, at present, the percentage of six-year-olds with dental
caries requiring treatment stands at 60%. What is of concern is that the number
of dental caries in 15-year olds is almost double that of the 12-year-olds.
The burden of HIV/AIDS epidemic has resulted in added challenges for the
Oral Health Services. Many HIV infected people are now presenting themselves in
our clinics with the various oral manifestations of HIV/AIDS. We need to
address the wide burden of illnesses that include other communicable and
non-communicable diseases.
It has been demonstrated over many years in the West Rand district where the
trailer mobile clinics have been successfully deployed in rural communities to
great effect. The efficiency gains outweigh the investment in these models of
service delivery units.
Another area that needs attention, Dr Rashid, is extension of oral
healthcare services to mental health patients. Most of these patients end up
with dental health problems that are compounded by years of neglect due to
their mental health condition.
I will therefore suggest Dr Rashid, that in your outreach programmes you
consider incorporating them be they in our communities or institutions.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Health, Gauteng Provincial Government
21 August 2006
