DENTAL EDUCATION.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1918, Page 3

DENTAL EDUCATION.

**•» CENTRALISATION AT DUNEDIN. A MINISTER'S OBJECTIONS. (Special to "Star.") ' WELLINGTON, This Day. A recent deputation to Ministers suggested tho provision of bursaries for dental students, so as to encourage more of our youth to take up this under-manned profession. The Otago Dental School has not by any means realised the expectations raised in regard to it. The number of students has fallen. off, and the

Dominion is faced with a very seriousi shortage of trained dentists. Advocates of the Otago scheme believe that the provision of bursaries will get over the difficulties of location, which experience has proved to be so real; but there is an alternative, which the Hon. G. W. Russell, Min-isier-in-Charge of Hospitals and Public Health, put to the deputation, under which other centres will also be a.ble to provide dental training. The Minister referred to a. remark i»3' the President of the New Zealand Dental Association that 25 percent, of the students avlio were expected to get bursaries would be residents of Dunedin. This gave food for thought. Dunedin was a city of 60,000 inhabitants only, including its suburbs, and he did not think the Government would lay down the policy that they were to draw practically one-quarter of their future dentists 'from one city, and the rest of the Dominion was not to bet

placed in some way on level terms. This would be secured partly by students being able to take the first two years of their training at their own colleges, or at the dental schools that would be established. Thanks to the Auckland Hospital Board, on exceedingly fine dental clinic had been established in Auckland under perfectly competent supervision, where students could obtain all their practical training. He believed he was not disclosing any secret when he said it was the desire of_ the Auckland University College Board that the whole, or at any rate, the principal part of the remainder of the dental training should be given. at their university college He understood the importance of maintaining the high standard of the tal degree, and he would not be a party "to setting up a substitute for

the Otago Dental School unless he could satisfy the country that the f-tudents who went to Auckland, Christchuroh and Wellington would attain the same level of efficiency as if they studied in. Dunedin. As the Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington Hospital Boards had dental clinics, he had proposed that they should give free treatment to every child whose father earned less than £-1 per week, but be came to grief because he told the Hospital Beards that lie thought nothing in the nature of dentistry of the higher class

should be done", and that it should! be confined to extractions, stopping* and fillings', which ought-not to averP.o'e more than four shillings per child. K the Department spent £5.000 a year it could treat 25,000 children per annum. Largely on account of shortage of dentists owing to the war, the dentists declined to° consider his proposal, and be was thrown back on the proposal that the Government, should provide bursaries for dental students, on condition that they come into the Government, sendee after training,, for a period of two or . three years.