Outside of Yellowknife, Hay River and Inuvik, there are no dental services in the NWT.
Dental services are not part of the public healthcare system. They are seen as a private healthcare responsibility, which takes access to medical travel assistance off the table for most potential dental patients.
There is a patchwork of various types of insurance coverage across the NWT. Some benefits are negotiated through collective bargaining. Seniors' benefits, non- insured health benefits (NIHB) for Indigenous people, private insurance, Metis health benefits, or the recent Canadian Dental Care Plan can provide some assistance to people. Lack of coverage is a problem, but it is not the major concern for those in smaller communities.
Thousands of Northerners, while they may have some dental coverage, have no access to dental services.
Since I live in Fort Smith, I will use it as an example. For several years, those in Fort Smith were able to receive treatment at the School of Dental Therapy. The school moved to Prince Albert, Sask., where they had a bigger population from which to draw patients. We also had a resident dentist for many years. When that family moved, a dental therapist provided basic services at the school for a time. Later, we had a dentist from Yellowknife who came in periodically.
Now there are no dental services of any kind SA国际影视传媒� no dentists, dental therapists or hygienists for our community of 2,500. We are dental orphans looking for dental care. Some of us can afford to travel for dental visits but hundreds of others are unable to travel for health or economic reasons, or both. Some will have to put off dental healthcare until it becomes a medical emergency. They will lose teeth, they will be more susceptible to disease, they will suffer complications from other diseases as well as suffer the negative psychological impact of having bad teeth and gums. Many studies have proven that good dental health is essential for maintaining good general health.
This issue has been around for years, so why am I writing about it now? Because of my friend. Suffering from a debilitating, incurable illness, my friend can no longer drive, is barely ambulatory, in constant pain and cannot fly unescorted. My friend has always been zealous about maintaining good dental health. Over the last couple of years, my friendSA国际影视传媒檚 condition has worsened. We have talked about the challenges and frustrations of living with the illness. Last week, our discussion came back to the lack of dental care in Fort Smith, especially for folks like my friend, who has been unable to travel and has not been able to see a dentist for a long time now. The grim future for my friend is decreasing dental health on top of the incurable illness. Our health system is silent on this territory-wide problem. We have talked about some of the things that could be done. We were both increasingly frustrated and depressed as we talked yet again about all this. Finally, I promised to write about this in my column.
This lack of dental care affects folks all over the North, and our government needs to step up to provide care for everyone.
The GNWT has to acknowledge the problem of no dental services for most of our communities and take the lead in finding the solution to better integrate dental care as part of the public health system.
Dental treatment should be covered by medical travel. Possibly those folks on medical travel could be booked to see a dentist while in Yellowknife, killing two birds with one stone.
There used to be dental therapists in schools to do prevention and basic dental care. This should be revived in some form, as a major prevention initiative mainly for children but also initial emergency dental care.
Health centres should convert one room for dentistry and start bringing in locum dentists on a regular basis. Or you could convert some of the vacated Aurora College adult learning centres in the communities into dental offices.
EveryoneSA国际影视传媒檚 first choice would be to have dental services available in your community and/or region. When it comes to health and dental care, the status quo is not working, but it is fixable by our governments. As in every other case, it all starts with political will.
