NHS Dentistry Services

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 11 May 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 1:35, 11 May 2022

Thanks very much, Altaf, and I would like to assure you that if dental treatment is urgent or the patient is in pain, it is expected that health boards will have provision in place to provide care quickly. And one of the things that I'm doing at the moment is I'm going through the details of the integrated medium term plans for each of the health boards and I'm making sure that every one of them has a proposal and a plan that are adequate to address the issues in relation to dentistry.

You'll be pleased to hear, I'm sure, that we have recently appointed a new chief dental officer. I'm very aware that this is an issue that is exercising a lot of the public in Wales, and I have now requested that we have monthly meetings to make sure that we get some real pace into the system. We did have a period of time where there wasn't a chief dental official in Wales in post, and so I'm really delighted now to see that we have appointed somebody and that that focus, I hope, will be brought to bear on the system.

We are still in a situation, of course, where aerosol-generating equipment could cause infection and so we do have to understand that there are still restrictions in relation to dentistry that may not be quite the same as in other NHS facilities.