Ukrainian children living in Britain have returned home for dental treatment after finding it impossible to get an appointment on the NHS.
The kids, including refugees who fled to the UK for safety, have been left with no choice but to return to the warzone after suffering with dental issues for months, MPs have heard.
Ex-Lib Dem party leader Tim Farron told Parliament ‘large numbers’ of children ‘find it easiest to’ return to their parents’ home country.
The crisis in NHS dentistry has been brewing for years, with some Brits forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers or travel abroad to see a dentist due to a lack of slots in the UK.
MPs have labelled the issue ‘Dickensian’ and warned that some constituents were living off a diet of ‘painkillers and soup’ while waiting to seek help.
Last year, a seven-year-old refugee and her mother were forced to return to Ukraine rather than wait four months for NHS dental treatment in Aberdeenshire. Lisa Martirosova (centre), who has been living with her family in Scotland since September 2022, urgently needed teeth removed under general anaesthetic after suffering ‘terrible’ tooth pain and stomach ache from daily antibiotics
NHS dental services for children have also suffered, with only 56 per cent seeing a dentist within the last year, 700,000 fewer than pre-pandemic
Addressing an opposition debate on NHS dentistry, Mr Farron said: ‘There are some children in Cumbria who find it easier to access dental treatment in a warzone than to access NHS dental care that their parents have already paid for through their taxes.’
He added: ‘I’ve heard first hand from my constituency the shocking scale of the difficulty of getting access to appointments for children.
‘A large number of our children are Polish, Romanian, Latvian and Ukrainian and, therefore, find it easiest to travel back to their parents’ home country.’
It comes after data obtained by the Liberal Democrats revealed 4.4million children in England were not seen by an NHS dentist in the year to June 2023, equating to 39 per cent of all children.
The NHS urges children to see a dentist at least once a year, while adults can wait up to two years between visits if they have good oral health, it advises.
Last year, a seven-year-old refugee and her mother were forced to return to Ukraine rather than wait four months for NHS dental treatment in Aberdeenshire.
Lisa Martirosova, who has been living with her family in Scotland since September 2022, urgently needed teeth removed under general anaesthetic after suffering ‘terrible’ tooth pain and stomach ache from daily antibiotics.
In March she travelled 2,000-miles to Ukraine with her mother Oksana via a flight to Poland and a gruelling 15-hour bus journey over the border to their home city of Kyiv.
At the time, she told the Press & Journal: ‘In our country, this would be an emergency and you would go to the hospital the same day or the next day, not after several months.
‘It is crazy because this can lead to very difficult problems. I don’t know how people with small children live with this problem.’
Later during the debate, Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting warned tooth decay was the ‘number one reason why children aged six to 10 end up in hospital’ and dubbed DIY dentistry a ‘moral outrage’.
He added: ‘One in 10 Brits … have been forced to attempt dentistry themselves because the NHS wasn’t there for them.
‘This is Dickensian. DIY dentistry in 21st-century Britain.
‘Is there any greater example of the decline this country has been subjected to under the Conservatives?’
Only 43 per cent of over-18s were seen by a dentist in the 24 months to June this year, compared to more than half in the same period before the pandemic struck
Overall, 18.1million adults saw their dentist in the two years to June 2023, up from 16.4million in the 24 months to June 2022. But it is still well below the 21million seen in the two years to June 2020
Last month, shock NHS figures revealed eight in 10 dentists in England are not accepting new adult patients.
Of the 4,969 dental surgeries across the country who have recently updated their status, 82 per cent are not adding new over-18s to their list.
Another 71 per cent aren’t taking new children, the NHS data shows.
But the figures are even bleaker in some parts of the country, with 99 per cent of practices in the South West seemingly rejecting requests from adults seeking NHS dental care.
NHS dentistry has been in crisis for years, with leaders claiming the sector has been chronically underfunded making it financially unviable to carry out treatments.
Exacerbating the problem is that, as more dentists leave the NHS, those that remain become swamped by more and more patients, resulting in a domino effect.
The number of dentists delivering NHS care dropped by 121 last year from 24,272 to 24,151, with the number falling by more than 500 since lockdown.
Patients have told of queuing from 4am outside dental practices to gain a spot at practices which have opened up their list to NHS patients — a phenomenon that experts have warned is becoming the ‘new normal’.
Practices have complained of receiving thousands of calls when they open a handful of slots for new patients.
Some patients say they have been forced to resort to performing DIY dentistry after struggling to access NHS care.
In March, Richard Howe, from Ely in Cambridgeshire, also revealed he had travelled to war-torn Ukraine to see a dentist after being unable to access care in the UK.
In March, Richard Howe (pictured), from Ely in Cambridgeshire, also revealed he had travelled to war-torn Ukraine to see a dentist after being unable to access care in the UK. Mr Howe developed an abscess under one of his teeth in February but was told by his local NHS dentist that there was ‘no chance’ of getting an NHS appointment and that he would have to be seen privately
After looking into this option, the least expensive quote he got was £875, plus a £75 emergency fee. As a last resort, the father-of-three decided to travel to Kyiv , where he had lived with his family for 12 years before the war, to have the work done at his old practice
Mr Howe developed an abscess under one of his teeth in February but was told by his local NHS dentist that there was ‘no chance’ of getting an NHS appointment and that he would have to be seen privately.
After looking into this option, the least expensive quote he got was £875, plus a £75 emergency fee.
As a last resort, the father-of-three decided to travel to Kyiv, where he had lived with his family for 12 years before the war, to have the work done at his old practice.
They told him they could see him immediately, so he took a flight to Poland and caught a 13-hour train across the border to Kyiv.
Within a week, his abscess had been drained. He also had a routine check-up which led to him having extra work done, including three root canals.
As he still owns a home in the capital, his accommodation was free. Travel expenses totalled £181 while the dental work itself cost £220 — less than half the cost of treatment in the UK.
A recent Health and Social Care Committee inquiry described the state of the NHS dental service as ‘totally unacceptable in the 21st century’.
It set out fundamental change centred on reform of the NHS contract dentists work to.
The British Dental Association (BDA), which represents dentists, characterized the reform plan as an ‘instruction manual’ to save NHS dentistry.
However, a recovery plan for the service — promised in April — has yet to be published by the government. Last month Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed it would be delivered in 2024 but failed to commit to a date.
