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22
The full-time woman dentist left towards the end of the year
and consequently there was difficulty in replacing her. It was
a number of weeks before the services of two part-time dentists
could be obtained and with the addition of a third part-time
dentist who had been giving his time during the greater part of
the year, the work for the children was carried out.
The number of sessions given by the three part-time dentists
each week is eleven, which is the equivalent of one whole-time
person. The dental service is still short of one whole-time dentist,
for the number of children returning from evacuation will soon bring
the school roll to the pre-war numbers.
A number of sessions of work was lost owing to the fact that,
one of the dentists was away from duty on account of sickness.
This loss of time affected the numbers of children treated as
shown in the figures.
It will be noticed that there was an increase in the
number of children seen in the schools. From this it appears that
very few children are still evacuated and the figure is approaching
the pre-war school roll. It was also noted that the bad mouth
conditions seen last year in the returned children were present
in the later arrivals. Nearly all had received little treatment
while in the reception areas.
The numbers inspected at the schools and at special inspections
at the Centres totalled 14,347, this figure being greater by 4,761
than in the previous year. The number of children found to require
treatment was nearly half of those seen, which is an improvement
on last year, when considerably more were found to require treatment.
The total number treated was 4,290, this number being a
little greater than in the preceding year, but smaller in ratio to
the numbers found to require treatment. This decrease was due,
as explained above, to the gap between replacing the dentists, also
sickness leave by one of the dentists.
The work carried out was, as usual, fillings in permanent
teeth and temporary teeth where suitable for them. Extraction
of permanent and temporary teeth were also done.
The number of fillings in permanent teeth totalled 3,024 and 60
temporary making a total of 3,084 fillings, which figure is larger
than the preceding year.
The number of teeth extracted totalled 8,644. Of this number
1,285 were permanent and 7,359 temporary. The increase over
last year is in the figure for temporary extractions, but the permanent
figure is smaller than the preceding year. The permanent
extraction figure will be on the large side until all the children
have returned from the areas as they will then come under
a more intensified scheme of dental treatment.