£55,000 Plan For Dental Research

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30406, 3 April 1964, Page 1

£55,000 Plan For Dental Research

(Neu> Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 2. The Dental Association today announced plans to raise funds to establish a research foundation to give greater impetus to dental research in New Zealand.

A campaign to obtain £55,000 —chiefly through gifts from the profession itself—will be launched at a dinner the association will hold in Auckland on Monday night.

The Governor-General (Sir Bernard Fergusson) will attend. The association said in a statement that the dental research foundation was being established to create more opportunities for doing dental research in New Zealand where at present the money available for research was “grossly inadequate.” Of the amount spent on the treatment of dental disease, less than 0.2 per cent was going into research. With no money available specifically for training, promising young men at the University of Otago dental school were being lost to research. Aims of Foundation The aims of the dental research foundation were:— (1) To stimulate interest in research among undergraduates of high academic attainment, and to sustain this interest among graduates. (2) To create a permanent one or two-year research fellowship at the Dental School. (3) To help graduates undertake research in New Zealand for advanced degrees with the object of

entering academic and research careers. (4) To support selected projects undertaken by dental practitioners trained and experienced in research methods.

The only money now available specifically for research at the Dental School, said the association, was the income of about £450 a year obtained from a £12,000 gift by Sir Thomas Hunter in 1947.

The association’s campaign hoped to raise a capital sum to produce an income of at least £2OOO a year.

The association said that because of the existing shortage of trained dental research workers, what full-time research had been carried out in New Zealand was largely done by non-New Zealanders. Four groups were involved in this work, the dental research unit of the Medical Research Council, the Dental School itself, the Health Department’s Division of Dental Health, and some individual dentists. Lack of trained research workers had restricted the activities of the dental research unit. The Dental School, where excellent facilities were available, was limited by the little money available to it. The Division of Dental Health, which used to have one officer engaged full-time on research, now had no one at all.

Although the division had ready access to a great fund of clinical and statistical

material, it could no longer make use of it. Few dentists in . private practice were doing research projects of their own, and no money was available for these projects. A group of trustees will decide how the funds will be invested to produce the foundation’s revenue. The trustees are: Mr M. E Priestley (Auckland), Dr Mangos, Dr. R. C. Tonkin (Auckland) for the profession; and Messrs Ajthol Wells (Auckland), R. McKenzie (Wellington) and C. V. Smith (Dunedin), lay members.