Dr Pranjan Mitra, Chief Dental Officer, Denta Mitra highlights that mobile dental programs will play a crucial role in improving oral health. This will provide great accessibility to dental care
These are times when you must choose doctors who are right in your immediate neighbourhood because you cannot easily get to a medical expert whose practice is far away. Ambulances are only for emergencies, and not for the regular doctor visits. It is true for all bustling Indian cities.
What goes for doctors also goes for dentists. Being a senior dentist I realised, India’s dental healthcare in urban and rural is not organised, neither equipped and not much has been done to make quality dental care easily accessible, especially to Elderly, Physically and mentally challenged, Dementia who find difficult to visit clinics due to immobility and they are the ones who face major dental issues due to their age or disorder and require regular care. Also they can’t take the rigours of city travel in India. Many senior colleague dentists agree and now convinced to this.
In rural areas situation is worse. Lack of oral care awareness and non-availability of quality dental treatment and good dentist due to
- Migration of specialist to cities for better earning
- Lack of advanced equipment due to High costs make things difficult for the local people and they have to travel to cities for dental treatments.
The dentist to population ratio has dramatically improved in the last one to two decades with no significant improvement in the oral health status of the general population. The various studies have revealed an increasing trend in oral diseases in the recent times especially among this underserved population.
Mobile and portable dental services are a viable option to take the sophisticated oral health services to the doorsteps and make dentistry convenient for both urban and underserved population.
The mobile dental services model can offer access to dental care, preventive healthcare, and chronic disease screening and management services. Services often offered by mobile dental programs include dental exams and cleanings, education, and dental sealants. However few startups through its innovative portable clinic model known as “Suitcase Clinic” offers complex procedures, such as root canals at patient’s home.
Mobile dental services also gives dentists a leverage to have affordable dentistry as practice and grow.
Startups are not only helping patients get dental services anytime anywhere but also offers a 10 times lesser investment for dentists to practice through its revolutionary portable clinic model. Suitcase Clinic kit includes portable chair, x-ray, suction unit, a compressor and other portable instruments that can be easily carried by dentists in a customised suitcase trolley and can be setup at patients location in just five minutes.
Mobile dental programs will play a crucial role in improving oral health. This will provide great accessibility to dental care. Existing clinic practitioners can use mobile dental program to generate patients for their clinics. The mobile program may also refer patients for more specialised care to private dental practices.
Though the mobile and portable systems have some practical difficulties like financial considerations, they still seem to be the only way to reach every section of the community in the absence of national oral health policy and organised school dental health programs in India.
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