THOUSANDS of people across Cornwall will soon be able to access urgent and emergency dental care as the government and NHS rolls out a programme of extra appointments.

Health Minister Stephen Kinnock announced today (Friday) that over 700,000 appointments across the country would be made available in a bid to tackle the current crisis in NHS dentistry.

Statistics from the GP Patient Survey 2024 revealed that around one in three patients in the South West region who tried to see an NHS dentist in the past two years were unable to do so.

It has, not surprisingly, led to a major crisis, not just locally, but nationally.

As part of the government’s plan, each Integrated Care Board has a target of urgent appointments to roll out. These will be based on estimated local levels of unmet need for urgent NHS care. Levels of unmet need are calculated by measures, including looking at how many people tried and failed to get an NHS dentist appointment.

As part of the 700,000 appointments created, a total of 10,910 will be here within Cornwall. Across the Tamar in Devon, they will have a figure of 24,269, while in Somerset, the number is that of 13,498.

“NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect,” said Mr Kinnock. “Often patients have been left in pain, without appointments or queuing around the block just to be seen. Thanks to this intervention, patients across the South West will benefit from thousands more emergency appointments.

“Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry - focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time, but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.”

Children’s oral health is also in crisis, with tooth decay being the number one reason that children aged 5-9 years-old are admitted to hospital. More than a fifth of five-year-old school children have signs of dental decay, according to data published by OHID last week.

To tackle this, the government say they will also introduce a new supervised tooth-brushing scheme for 3-to-5-year-olds, which is aimed at providing advice and tooth brushing guidance in the school setting to children living in the most deprived areas in England, as well as providing toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Jason Wong, chief dental officer for England, added: “Dentists are working hard to help as many patients as possible, but too many people experience difficulties in accessing NHS dental services.

“It is vital that we do more to improve access. We are working with local systems to prioritise this, which includes providing 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments, to help make it quicker and easier for those most in need to be seen and treated on the NHS and we are incentivising dentists to work in underserved areas so that all areas of the country can receive the care they need.”