Hole in North dental care

Some children in the Mid North are waiting up to 18 months to see a dental therapist.
A shortage of dental therapists is behind the lengthy waiting times and Northland Health, which provides dental services for primary school age children, is prioritising dental services in the area to combat the shortage.
While most children have to wait about 18 months for treatment, children still had access to a dental therapist if they required urgent treatment at clinics open for pain relief, said dental services team leader Pip Zammit.
The region has been short of a dental therapist in the Mid North for about four years and authorities have advertised extensively for dental therapists to fill vacant positions now equivalent to 1.4 full-time therapists.
Northland Health is currently re-advertising the positions.
Ms Zammit said school dental work in the area was being prioritised according to need and therapists and assistants were working in teams to work more efficiently.
Two teams, each comprising two therapists and and two assistants, worked in schools at Kawakawa and Kerikeri.
A third team comprising a therapist and an assistant was working from a mobile unit at Maromaku.
Northland Health has also accessed the services of a community dentist who works in the area for a day once a fortnight, seeing children whose dental needs cannot be met by therapists.
Kaikohe West Primary School principal Barbara Wards said a lack of therapists in the area had been a problem for a number of years.
"It's difficult for our parents. It means that if they want their children to go to a dental nurse they have to go to Kawakawa or Kerikeri depending on where the dental nurses are.
"I think the children are not being checked as regularly as they used to be ... there is just a shortage in that profession (dental therapy) at the moment."
Hauora Whanui adolescent dental therapist Anne Callagher said there was a definite shortage of therapists in the region and young people were not being seen regularly enough.
"There's a definite shortage of dental therapists. They're not training as many as they used to and it doesn't seem to be an attractive career option for young girls these days," she said.
Hauora Whanui is contracted by the Northland District Health Board to provide an adolescent dental service for Northland, Okaihau and Bay Of Islands colleges.
The shortage of dental therapists was compounded by some dentists withdrawing from adolescent dental care because Government funding did not cover costs, Ms Callagher said.