Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 26 April 2022.
Llywydd, I thank Peter Fox for those supplementary questions. There is no dispute that dentistry has been even more significantly affected by COVID conditions than other parts of the health service, because of the nature of aerosol-generating procedures, as he will know, that are inherent in the way that dentists have to go about their profession. Now, I was able to speak yesterday with the new Chief Dental Officer for Wales, Andrew Dickenson, and to discuss with him exactly some of the points that the Member has raised: how can we create a pathway in which we can see a resumption of NHS dental services at a level that was available prior to the COVID pandemic, and how can we build on that further?
So, as well as the additional money that the Minister for Health and Social Services has made available for dentistry in this financial year, and as well as the contract reform that we discussed on the floor of the Senedd some weeks ago, and I'm pleased to say there are promising indications of the number of dental practices that are signing up for the new contract, I also talked to the new chief dental officer about a change in the way that he believes we should be streaming patients into dentistry. So, the proposal is that every patient going to a dentist would provide a respiratory history in advance of their appointment. For people who have histories of respiratory illnesses, some of the COVID protections that are currently in place will continue to be necessary, but for people who have non-respiratory histories, some of the restrictions on the way that dentists operate because of COVID are capable of being lifted, and lifted safely. And that will mean that dentists will be able to see more patients in a session than they have been able to while they've been operating under the amber conditions that Peter Fox referred to.
So, I wanted at least to give him that assurance that there are very active plans being developed under the leadership of the new chief dental officer to find ways in which safely we can restore NHS dentistry to operating conditions, where it's safe to do so, for patients where it's safe to do so, closer to those obtained before the pandemic began.