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India has severe shortage of Dentists -WHO says

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  • 21/05/2012 at 5:57 pm #10544
    drsushantdrsushant
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    Less than one dentist for 10,000 Indians

    India is facing a severe shortage of dentists.

    The World Statistics 2012, released on Wednesday by the World Health Organization (WHO), says India has less than 1 dentist (0.8) per 10,000 population. In absolute numbers, there are only 93,332 dentists.

    India’s neighbours, however, are worse off.

    Though China has 51,012 dentists, the density is as low as 0.4 per 10,000 population.

    Bangladesh has 0.2 dentists per 10,000 population; Pakistan (0.6), Sri Lanka (0.8) and Afghanistan (0.3).

    In comparison, developed countries like Greece has 13.2 dentists per 10,000 population, Norway (8.9), Israel (8.8), Denmark (8.1), Germany (7.8), Japan (7.4), Australia (6.9), France (6.8) and the UK (5.3).

    The Planning Commission says oral diseases qualify as major public health problems owing to their high prevalence in India. It says oral diseases restrict activities at school and work, causing millions of school and work hours to be lost each year throughout the world.

    “Oral disease burden in India is very high due to several reasons. Many oral health surveys have been done and the prevalence of various oral diseases in the population are Dental Caries (40%-45%), periodontal diseases (advanced disease in 40%), malocclusion (30% of children), Oral cancer (12.6 per lakh population), dental fluorosis endemic in 230 districts of 19 states, Edentulousness (tooth loss) 19%-32% of elderly population above 65 years. Given the burden of oral diseases in our country and their impact, oral diseases need to be paid attention to,” the Plan panel says,

    India has 6.5 physicians per 10,000 population (7.57 lakh physicians) and 10 nurses (11.46 lakhs). It also has 5.78 lakh pharmaceutical personnel – 5.2 per 10,000 population.

    The country also has just nine hospital beds per 10,000 population, and only 3,656 psychiatrists.

            

    19/01/2013 at 4:12 pm #16336
    DrsumitraDrsumitra
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    DENTISTS from overseas countries with dental workforce shortages are being imported to Australia to meet a non-existent demand, according to the federal president of the Australian Dental Association.

    The ADA’s Dr Karin Alexander said recent figures, released by the Graduate Careers Council of Australia, had confirmed there was a major oversupply of graduate dentists in the dental workforce.

    Dr Alexander said the association had been calling for a major health workforce study to be completed, but it had not been done.

    "Therefore, without knowing with any certainty what the demand for dentists is in the community, governments have invested substantial funds in training new dentists yet have also permitted a very high number of overseas trained dentists register as dentists here," Dr Alexander said.

    "It is illogical and economically unsound of government to invest so much money in the education of dentists, only to have them take up employment in less skilled roles."

    Figures from the latest Grad Stats publication, released earlier this month, revealed that while traditionally full time work placements for dental graduates has sat around 94%, it dropped about 4% to 83.6% last year.

    Dr Alexander said while Australians had always welcomed overseas skilled workers, many were coming from countries with workforce shortages in the dental industry.

    "Australia is accepting dentists from countries that have dentist workforce shortages to meet a demand that does not exist in Australia," Dr Alexander said.

    "If Australia is going to invest in training here, then surely it should ensure that those graduating, as a consequence of that investment, have a role to play as dentists in the community."

     

            

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