DENTAL CLINICS

Waipa Post, Volume 39, Issue 3087, 10 December 1929, Page 5

DENTAL CLINICS

NEW ZEALAND SYSTEM PRAISED.

High praise for New Zealand’s school dental clinics is bestowed by Mr Sampson Handley, senior surgeon of Middlesex Hospital, in a report which he has submitted to the Grand Council of the British Empire Cancer Research Campaign, following his recent visit to New Zealand. He declares that the New Zealand Ministry has met the matter in a masterly manner, and suggests that as dental caries were undoubtedly the cause of mouth cancer, dental care should be included in the National Health Insurance Scheme.

“ May I call the attention of the Grand Council,” stated the report, “ to the manner in which New Zealand has solved a problem of public health which the Mother Country has to face. I refer to the prevalence of dental caries in children of school age, undoubtedly one of the causes, and perhaps the principal one, of the frequency of cancer in the mouth in latter life. Mouth cancer is very rarely seen in a mouth which a dental surgeon would pass as clean. “ The dental surgeon is the product of long training, and even if the body of dental surgeons could be increased it would be difficult to cope with the mass of work awaiting it in the schools. The head of the dental department in the New Zealand Ministry has met these difficulties in a bold and masterly manner. The system, which met with much opposition at first, now commends itself to the dental surgeons themselves. I suggest as a practical measure of cancer prevention that the council actively support the efforts now being made by the British Dental Association to have dental care included as a benefit of national health insurance.”