Festival goers have been taking advantage of Glastonbury’s medical care to get dental appointments because of access issues at home, says the charity that organises healthcare on the site.
Festival Medical Services has been providing healthcare services at Glastonbury Festival since 1979. It has several medical tents and pharmacies that primarily deal with minor injuries, including bruised ankles, sprains and heat exhaustion.
In an interview with The Guardian, Chris Howes, managing director of Festival Medical Services, said, “We have a dental clinic here, and we did notice that there are a lot of people very early on after we opened who were turning up with dental problems.”
The centre opened a month before the festival officially started to provide emergency care for staff and construction crews setting up facilities. Chris commented, “We’ve seen a lot of the site crew, people working here on the build, who haven’t had access to a dentist either because they don’t have one or they couldn’t get off to see someone.
“We don’t offer routine check-ups or teeth polishing or anything like that – it is emergency dentistry that we do.”
Explaining the nature of the charity’s care, Chris said, “They are enough to make you miserable and to want to sort it out, but they aren’t anything too desperate.”
Most of the Festival Medical Services’ clinical volunteers have an NHS background and can treat the majority of patients on-site.
Between 4,000 and 5,000 patients are estimated to be treated at the 2023 festival.