In England, only a third of adults – and half of children – now have access to an NHS dentist. As those in pain turn to charity-run clinics for help, can anything stop the rot?
It is over an hour before the emergency dental clinic is due to open, but Jodie Manning is taking no chances. She hasn’t been able to eat for four days – “I can’t physically bite down any more” – and is determined to get an appointment. Sitting on a plastic chair outside a community centre in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the student hairdresser is a picture of misery, periodically clutching her cheek and looking down at the number she has been given to mark her place in the rapidly growing queue.
Aged 19, she has been to hospital with severe toothache “three-and-a-half times” in the previous year. The half is when they sent her home without treatment; on the other occasions, she was kept in overnight after collapsing from pain and dehydration, when even drinking liquids hurt her swollen mouth. Morphine has become her crutch: she fell asleep in college recently after taking the powerful painkiller. Like many of those waiting grimly in line, she has been struck off by her NHS dentist after not attending for two years, even though surgeries were shut to all but emergency cases during Covid.
