687. JADA

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686. LISBON: Homeless will have dental appointments

The approximately 800 people who live on the street and who receive support from the Lisbon City Council will now have oral health care. In the first stage, a screening will be done, and then the necessary dental interventions will be performed.For the realization of the program Sorrir não Custa, this Thursday was signed, in the City Hall of Lisbon, a protocol between the autarchy and the person in charge of the project. The program is expected to start later this month, said Mário Almeida, head of the Municipal Homeless Program. The aim is to consult the entire homeless population of the capital.Paulo Varela, a dentist and clinical director of Sorrir não Custa, said many people complain that they do not go to job interviews because their teeth are not in good condition. To reverse this situation, the project aims to identify people who need help, educate them on oral hygiene and treat them through dental implants whenever possible.In order to reach the entire homeless population of the capital, the project will count on the support of the Lisbon Center for Homeless Planning and Intervention (NPISA), in an articulated work with the street technical teams, explained the coordinator of the nucleus, João Marrano.The Councilor for Social Rights of the municipality, João Afonso, said that there is no date for the conclusion of the program. The Chamber will be a facilitator to implement this program, which will not have costs for the municipality, he stressed.
Correio da Manhã

685. Dentists doctors of the National Health Service "no conditions to attend" on the waiting list

Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese users are on the waiting list for consultation of Dentistry through the National Health Service (SNS), which has only 58 dentists for all the attendances. The professionals gathered this Saturday in Aveiro, at the 1st National Meeting of Dental Medicine of the SNS, to discuss priorities in care.
The debate was part of an initiative of the Ministry of Health aimed at bringing together several dentists practicing in the SNS, in order to analyze working conditions, forms of access to consultation by users and the interconnection between different levels of care. We seek to create a consensus regarding the type of users to whom priority should be given, because, with the resources that exist, there are no conditions to meet all, said the member of the organization of the event, José Farias Bulhosa.

The difficulties in accessing the consultation are felt all over the country: in Baixo Vouga, for example, there are 380 thousand users on the waiting list and in Lisbon, there are doctors with 200 thousand potential users waiting for it.
With regard to professionals, there are only 18 dentists in the continent, 11 in Madeira and 29 in the Azores, all without a clinical career, since the State considers them to be senior administrative technicians.
The size of the request for oral pathology is not a type of consultation where it is done for the first time, and the patient is discharged. Sometimes it takes scheduling of several queries to handle it, but we can not tell you to come after five years, because the list is quite large, explained Jose Bulhosa.

Many of the users who expect to be in the SNS are people who are economically fragile to access private care. Although there are equipment, these are stopped or underutilized because they do not open spaces for professionals.
Dentists acknowledge the attention given to the subject by the Government. However, they seek to avoid failures already noted in the pilot projects announced for the Alentejo and Tagus Valley. To this end, they intend to have a national and regional coordination carried out by people who have sensitivity to the Dental Medicine, preferably trained in the area, in order to reach the distinct realities of each service.

Last week, the head of the Order of Dentists, Orlando Monteiro da Silva, had already appealed to the opening of vacancies within the public service: In a country with so many deficiencies in access to oral health, it was particularly common sense to take advantage of dentists underemployment, and place them serving the most needy population, within the SNS.
Monteiro da Silva spoke about the document Numbers of the Order 2016, which showed a 4.6% increase in the number of professionals enrolled in the Order, a growth considered much above the needs of the country and the WHO recommendation of a dentist for each two thousand inhabitants.

Jornal Médico