Three out of ten people in Portugal do not have access to oral health, warned the president of dentists today, reporting "calamitous" cases such as 25-year-olds without any teeth and elderly people who have never entered an office. Over the course of four days, Miguel Pavão evaluated the conditions of dentists who work in various health units of the five Regional Health Administrations (ARS) in the country, in an itinerary that ended today with a visit to the Damaia Health Center, municipality of Amadora, district of Lisbon.
At the health centre, where the president of the Lisbon and Tagus Valley ARS, Luís Pisco, was present, the chairman of the Portuguese Dental Association (OMD) took stock of the "Dental Medicine in the SNS" roadmap, starting by alerting that the goal of the "Oral Health for All Project" for 2020 has not been met. The goal was for all health centers to have the possibility of having a dentist, but in 2021 the OMD "went to the field, traveled around the country, and realized that this design is to be fulfilled", Miguel Pavão told the Lusa agency. Only 40% of the territory is covered in terms of dental medical assistance, he pointed out, justifying that, of the 278 planned health centers, only 132 are operating with a dental office.
During the tour, Miguel Pavão observed situations of "very calamitous oral health": "There are young people between 25 and 30 years old who no longer have any teeth in their mouths. It is worrying these days to witness this reality". On the other hand, in the countryside, there are "very old people" who have never had the opportunity to go to the dentist, he said, arguing that this "is an opportunity" to finally have access to dentistry. However, he defended, this response needs to be complemented with the part of oral rehabilitation, which involves people being able to put on dental prostheses, a possibility that the OMD will present to the Government, through public-private partnerships.
Miguel Pavão explained that dentists, who have a network of private providers throughout the country, can provide this service in "a shared way, either by the user or by the budget of the Ministry of Health". He also said that during the script he found "a major discrepancy" between the ARS, and that "there is no truly grounded and oriented strategy for dentistry".
The chairman said that the Center was the region where he saw "a lot of deficit and a lot of difficulty regarding the issue of oral health", but he noted that "it is not good" to compare who "goes more advanced". But he said there are "good examples" that could be replicated: "In Lisbon and Castelo Branco I saw oral health units created that have to be a precursor example of what will be scaled, disseminated and disseminated so that dentistry is a vigorous reality and a capable response that the Portuguese can trust". "Dentists have a very important private service network, there are co-payments and models that are in place and there are others that can be created, but this answer in the SNS does not duplicate the answer, because 30% of the Portuguese population do not have care and still do not has access to the dentist", creased. This is "a socially disadvantaged population", which covers 2.3 million Portuguese who need oral health support, which "is fundamental for social inclusion and employability", he said, considering that this "is a cause national. Present at the visit, Inês Monteiro Filipe, a dentist in a public health unit, and who is part of the regional group of Oral Health of ARSLVT, defended that it is necessary to guarantee equity of access to the population. "We have municipalities with a high population density and with a dentist and we have municipalities with a smaller population density with a dentist as well and, therefore, it does not guarantee equity of access", he stressed. According to the dentist, the medium and long-term project is to increase the capacity of Dentistry in these municipalities to reach a time when there is no family dentist, but "a dentist for most of the population that has this need". Currently, he said, "we have 37 offices already set up in 26 municipalities, there are 52 in ARSLVT, and until the end of this month,we expect the opening of 12 more and by the end of the year the opening, if not all, of most".
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