Dentists: cut NHS charges and use sugar levy to invest in next generation

In a five point plan for better oral health, the British Dental Association Wales (BDA Wales) has outlined how the next government could turn around the nation’s poor history on oral health. The last Child Dental Health Survey revealed 66 per cent of Welsh 15 year olds have decay, compared with just 41 per cent in England.

Welsh officials recently took a different approach to NHS England, and froze dental charges for 2016. However, data from the Adult Dental Health Survey shows nearly 400,000 people in Wales have delayed or avoided dental treatment because of costs. The BDA is now calling for the assembly to go a step further and make these charges genuinely affordable for lower income families who don’t currently qualify for help.

Dentists said the next government should also use its autonomy by spending a portion of the proceeds from the new sugar levy to fund expansion of the Designed to Smile initiative to all nurseries in areas of high deprivation. Supervised brushing and fluoride varnish programmes have already contributed to a 12 per cent reduction in decay among under fives since 2008, according to research by Cardiff University.