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DENTAL SERVICES
the council's Chief Dental Officer and Principal School Dental Officer reports as
follows :
Some progress can be recorded in most aspects of the dental service for the year 1956
(graphs on page 126). While total numbers employed remained far below the desired
establishment of 142 full-time dental officers, staff turn-over was not so alarming as in
immediately preceding years. A slight increase in staff, plus an additional number of
voluntary overtime sessions, resulted in an increase of 1,500 sessions compared with the
number in 1955.
School dental service
Two disturbing figures emerge however from statistical computations :
(i) the continued rise in percentage of school-children found on inspection to
require dental attention (Table II) and
(ii) the retrogression in the filling : extraction ratio (Table III).
The former is beyond the control of dental officers but the latter can be influenced
by the nature of the attention given to patients who attend for treatment. It is difficult,
however, if not impossible, to give in every instance the desired standard of treatment
in a dental surgery which is affected by the demands of far too many patients. The
average staff: pupil ratio throughout the county remained at a very unsatisfactory and
gravely overloaded figure with one full-time dental officer to each 6,100 schoolchildren.
Health division 7 proved worst at 1 : 8,000 and health division 2 was best with a ratio of
1 : 4,500 which is, nevertheless, still excessive.
With such ratios, regular and systematic dental inspection followed by thorough
attention is impossible, and it is perhaps fortunate for all concerned that a considerable
number of parents undertook to have their children treated privately. Not all parents,
however, who state they will adopt this course do in fact do so, their failure being due
either to procrastination or to inability to find a private practitioner able and willing to
accept child patients. Neglected mouths with extensive caries or other faults remained all
too prevalent throughout the year.