THOUSANDS of dental patients in Liskeard face having to pay for private treatment after being de-resgisterd and denied NHS treatment.

This makes the town one of the worst hit in an already crisis ridden dental health service in Cornwall.

At the moment there are no dentists in Liskeard who are accepting new patients on the NHS, apart from two who will accept denture work.

This leaves patients with no alternative but to pay for private treatment.

In the whole of Cornwall only eight dentists are taking new NHS patients and none of these are in the South East Cornwall area. The nearest is Redruth or Truro.

In Liskeard alone 2,500 patients were de-registered in January, followed by more in February and March. Launceston saw 722 patients de-registered in February.

De-registered patients are those who have previously been registered with a particular dentist and have been removed from the lists. The figures do not include new residents who are unable to find dental treatment when they move.

Cornwall community health council chairman, Neil Burden has also hit out at the growing trend amongst dentists in Cornwall only to accept children as NHS patients if their parents are registered privately.

Mr Burden said: 'The idea that you can register your child with a dentist, but only if you, as a parent, are registered privately is tantamount to blackmail - and is a practice that I consider to be quite unacceptable. We really do need some action nationally to halt this deterioration in dental services, which over time is likely to have grave consequences for the health of the local population.'

He said that, once again, it was the poor in society who were affected.

The Health Council is hoping to send a motion to the national Association of Community Health Councils' conference in July. The government is currently in the process of developing a strategy for NHS dentistry, which Cornwall's CHC regards as a high priority.

Mr Burden said: 'Unless action is taken this year, we may have no NHS dental service left to save in Cornwall.'

However the chairman of Cornwall Independent Dental Practitioners, Dr Martin Wills said that the NHS payment to dentists for inspecting children's teeth is tiny and does not cover costs. Having their parents as private patients effectively acts as a subsidy.

He said that if anyone can justifiably be accused of blackmail it is the Department of Health for the way it has treated dentists. He explained: 'We think that it is immoral and wrong that NHS dentistry is under-funded. I am sure you will find that all dentists in Cornwall would much prefer to work within a well-funded NHS.'

Dr Wills also spoke of the shortage of dentists in Cornwall, there being only 160.