Thursday 27 January 2011

419. Which way forward for the Order of Dentists?

Portugal remains in the XXI century, without defining a strategic policy in the context of oral health. Governments continue to simply ignore the importance of oral health for the well-being of people and many hundreds of thousands of children and young people remain without any prospect of having access to oral health consultations in good time. Our country continues to discriminate against the citizens' access to oral health care, violating any principles of human dignity, not respecting international conventions it has signed, including the Charter of the Rights of the Child.
Currently, Portugal, oral health is only accessible to the privileged social classes, including the bourgeoisie, allied to political power and economic force, the overwhelming majority of the working class, pensioners, retirees and dependents are manifestly unable to gain access to oral health by SNS (National Health Service), which offers no answers to the needs of the population.
We all know that there is lack of economic resources, the problem lies solely in the bad government we have today, heavy and overly bureaucratic and administrative, stealing billions of euros annually from our taxes to support jobs that simply do not produce anything for the country, all this money should revert to the pressing needs of the population and the state should dramatically reduce many cabinets full of unproductive people who are useless to a country that wants to be modern and developed, persists while the current model of public administration.
It's completely false the idea that it is extremely costly to create a national network of oral health care in all health centers in the country, this mercantilist conception of health has no pertinence, because health can not be bought or sold. We all know that oral health prevention can save a fortune endless financial resources in the medium and long term, so that any investment made today will quickly be amortized in the future, augmented by huge gains in health improvement.
In this regard, the crucial position of the Order of Dentists; it should have to choose between the option of continuing to let everything be as it is or if you really want to contribute towards radically changing the policies followed by oral health in Portugal.
The choice is simple: to continue being a country where only the privileged have access to oral health, given that only have the private profit interests and see oral health as a business (doing nothing to prevent and combat oral diseases In order to guarantee themselves a niche market in the medium and long term, constituting an obstacle to any improvement in overall oral health of its population and behaving as in most third world countries, where economic interests overlap social interests), or changes its direction and understand oral health as well as an essentially social (not economic), elementary and fundamental to all people, fighting for full integration of oral health in the SNS (National Health Service) and the universality of access to all citizens, without discrimination on the basis of their economic possibilities and striving for a clear and manifest soon prevention of childhood.
Is the Order of Dentists to match the requirements of civil society and population, not to be swayed by the interests of the political regime installed and the economic groups, the first only interested in hunting to vote and to be perpetuated in power and only the second win in money in return for public health?

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