A mother from Ukraine has said she will return to the country in order to get dental treatment due to access troubles in the UK.
According to a BBC report, the 36 year old said she was in ‘excruciating’ pain – but struggled to access NHS dentistry and could not afford private care.
As a result, she travelled to the city of Dnipro, Ukraine, to undergo root canal treatment.
She said although Dnipro is ‘very dangerous’, she could not stay here as the pain was ‘very strong’.
Concerns over work
This follows a report earlier this year that show dentists are among the one in five Ukrainians in the south east who are opting to return home – prompting concerns over barriers to secure work and accommodation for refugees.
A BBC investigation revealed that one fifth of Ukrainians who arrived in Surrey, Kent and Sussex as part of a government visa scheme have returned to Ukraine.
By 23 January this year, the south east welcomed almost 12,800 refugees under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Surrey welcomed the most Ukrainians under the scheme, followed by Kent. West and East Sussex are within the top 10.
However, figures show that 20% of those arrivals have since returned to Ukraine.
‘Inaccurate’ answers
During March, the BDA said the government gave ‘evasive and inaccurate answers’ regarding NHS dentistry at a Health and Social Care Committee hearing.
According to the association, minister Andrea Leadsom failed to outline exactly how the new NHS dental recovery plan will generate millions of new appointments, as claimed in the government report.
Leadsom said: ‘…it’s not an exact science,’ and that ‘it’s a complicated set of factors… with quite a high likelihood of not being reliable’.
Also during the hearing, Leadsom stated that there are more than 60,000 dental therapists ‘waiting in the wings’. However, according to the BDA, the real number is 6,198.
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