A pretty twenty-something year old lady from a town in Perak came all the way to me to have a root canal done on her lower wisdom tooth. I was saddened when I discovered that the adjacent lower first and second molars had already been extracted at her young age. Apparently she couldn't get root canal treatment in her home town and extraction was her only option when she visited the dental clinic there. She managed to google me in her attempt to save her third molar.
That got me thinking about the kind of dental treatment Malaysians receive out of Kuala Lumpur. The fact is there hasn't been any improvement in our national dental healthcare for the past twenty or more years. Our government dental clinics have been doing simple fillings and extractions only, all these years. One can never get a root canal done there, and even if this treatment modality is available in some main Klinik Kesihatan Gigi, the waiting list is so long that the patient might as well extract the tooth. Our new dental graduates are subjected to compulsory government services for three years. They were taught how to carry out root canal treatment in dental schools, then why is the service not provided in government dental clinics? In my understanding, these government clinics are poorly equipped with the gadgets and tools necessary to carry out root canal treatment. No budget apparently, wonder where all the taxpayers' money go?
How many twenty-something year old Malaysians can afford a RM7000 implant to replace an extracted tooth? Instead of focusing on implementation of the national health insurance 1Care, our Ministry of Health should seriously look into improving dental services in the public sector.
