Crisis as 2,000 dentists quit and one county branded Britain's 'dental desert'
9 May 2022, 12:25 | Updated: 9 May 2022, 12:29
Thousands of Somerset residents have been left unable to find an NHS dentist after 2,000 quit in 12 months.
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The county has been branded a "dental desert" following the mass exodus across England last year, which has also left the health service with the smallest number of practitioners in a decade.
NHS officials in Somerset have set up a helpline to aid more than 500,000 residents find emergency care, according to patient champion organisation Healthwatch Somerset.
But the helpline has struggled to find enough dentists to complete the volume of work and residents have been forced to turn to private dentists with eye-watering bills of over £1,000.
Healthwatch Somerset said a third of the calls the county's helpline receives are from people struggling to access NHS dental care.
Many were from or on behalf of children and pregnant women who cannot access a practice despite being entitled to free dental care.
The organisation also warned elderly residents were being struck off patient lists after they failed to attend an appointment in a set amount of time as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Lydia Davis, who lives in Bridgwater, Somerset, said she has been unable to find a dentist within a two-hour radius of her home since moving there in early 2020.
Davis, 27, instead turned to a private dentist for treatment for gingivitis as well as two fillings and wisdom teeth removal but faces a bill of £1,100 for the care - a cost she said "brought me to tears".
She warned "there's no version of private dentistry that's affordable" and said using "affordable" to describe private health care was " a slap in the face when you are paying your taxes towards a vital service you have no access to."
It comes after the number of NHS dentists in England fell from 23,733 at the end of 2020 to 21,544 at the end of January this year, according to the Association of Dental Groups (ADG).
The Association has warned the drop could see more than four million find it harder to get treatment through the NHS.
A Healthwatch England poll found that 41 per cent of people have struggled to get an NHS dentist appointment while almost a quarter of respondents said they turned to a private provider in order to access treatment.
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