Africa-Press – Lesotho. THERE are only three government-run health facilities offering dental services to about 330 760 people living in Maseru, thepost heard this week. This has created a crisis for residents who are now forced to sometimes wait months to access dental services.
A doctor who spoke to this newspaper last week said all government-run health facilities had no dentists except the Likotsi Filter Clinic, Queen ’Mamohato Memorial Hospital, and the National Health Training Centre (NHTC).
The doctor said one has to book an appointment to access dental services at Queen ’Mamohato or the NHTC. “Now bookings are set for June at Tšepong (Queen ’Mamohato) and at the NHTC,” he said.
Faced with this crisis, patients are now left with no option but to seek services at private dentists who charge M250 to remove a tooth, way up from the M15 that they would have paid at the subsidised government clinics.
The director of oral health services in the Ministry of Health, Dr Lieketseng Petlane, told thepost last night that she is aware of the situation “but sometimes it might happen that the patients’ problems attended by dental therapists in clinics need more attention”.
“So patients have to set an appointment with a dentist for a certain period looking at their problems,” Dr Petlane said.
But she indicated that they will make a follow-up to find out if patients who had set appointments at the NHTC and Queen ’Mamohato had met dental therapists or not.
“Patients cannot set an appointment now to be attended in June without being attended by dental therapists,” she said. She said dentists from other countries are also helping to relieve the situation in Lesotho.
Health Minister Selibe Mochoboroane promised to investigate the matter urgently and decide on means to solve the problem. Lack of oral health professionals is a serious problem countrywide.
A study published last year, undertaken by two health researchers at the University of Pretoria, shows that the Lesotho National Dental Database includes only 30 dentists serving about 2.2 million people, which means that there is one dentist for every 66 666 people.
By comparison, the study says, the dentist to patient ratio in developed countries is one dentist for every 2000 people. “The actual picture in Lesotho is much grimmer, as some of these dentists work as educators at the National Health Training College, while others are in managerial, non-clinical roles,” the study says.
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