More than 5,000 dental checks were given to pregnant women and elderly in just over a month of operation of the oral health project, the vast majority of mothers, according to official figures provided today to Lusa. Dental checks were created by the Government as a way to address the shortage of oral health in the National Health Service (SNS - Serviço Nacional de Saúde in Portuguese).
According to figures from the Dental Association, 27 May to 07 July were issued more than 4483 dental checks for pregnant women and only about 600 checks for the elderly. Each pregnant then the health centers are entitled to three dental checks, a maximum total of 120 euros, a program that provides cover 65 thousand pregnant. The elderly beneficiaries of the solidarity supplement can enjoy a maximum of two dental checks for a total of 80 euros.
Although they were issued more than five thousand checks, the figures compiled by Monday show there are only 559 checks were used (about 10 percent of already issued). For the president of the Dental Association, Orlando Monteiro da Silva, the difference between the checks and have already used to do with the fact that people to schedule consultations for later, stressing that the use of checks is to have " in recent days an exponential growth. This is evidenced by the number of calls with requests for information to the dentist, they have been around an average of 60 calls daily, and the Chairman of the Dental Association decided to allocate only two officials to answer questions from users.
In the geographical distribution of the issue of dental checks, the Regional Health Administration (ARS) North emerges as the most checks is delivered, then the ARS Lisbon and Tagus Valley, the ARS Center, the Algarve and Alentejo. In the north there are 92 health centers to spend these coupons to users of the National Health Service (SNS), 87 Center, 79 in Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Alentejo 23 and 15 in the Algarve, a total of 296 structures throughout the country.
So far there are over 2,300 private physicians who joined the program of checks by the NHS, with more than 3,000 different sites that users may apply for consultations or treatments. The Dental Association estimates there will be 195 thousand consultations for pregnant women - a total of 7 800 000 EUR - and 190 thousand appointments for seniors, a total of 7 600 000 EUR. If there were a fair distribution of checks by medical members, each clinician had revenues of more than 6800 per year.
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