Lockdown backlog has left thousands of children without dental care

At every step of the lockdown journey, the nation’s children have seen their lives stagnate, their futures decimated, and their health (both physically and mentally) plummet.

Yesterday, the British Dental Association (BDA) highlighted the glaring medical backlog negatively impacting the oral well-being of countless British children. The BDA has also named a prime suspect in the case: the repetitive lockdown restrictions of 2020-21, which meant that parents could not escort their little tykes to the dentist for a routine inspection or to receive the medical treatment they so desperately required.

On a more personal note, I once worked with a colleague who had a severe toothache during the first lockdown. He told me that the pain was so excruciating that he considered yanking it out with whatever tools were at hand (likely a pair of metal plyers).

But enough about the adults. Over lockdown, the BDA note that the number of child tooth extractions decreased by more than half, from 35,190 in 2019/20 to only 14,645 in 2020/21. The reduction is not through parents filtering sugar out of their children’s diet (if anything, this problem only got worse over lockdown) or more rigorous tooth-brushing oversight, but through being unable to book a dentist appointment/receive hospital treatment due to the facilities being shut down for months on end.

Furthermore, the BDA are aware of the fact that, as a consequence, thousands of children may have been “left in pain” and had “difficulties learning, eating, and sleeping for over a year”. In turn, Charlotte Waite, the Chair of the England Community Dental Services Committee, has declared that the Government does not have any credible plan in place to deal with this crisis, nor does it possess any accurate figures informing them, and the wider public, of the true scale of the backlog.

The number of children impacted is a guestimate, but it clearly runs into the tens of thousands. Waite fears that some children will be waiting years before their oral ailments are fully alleviated. At every step of the lockdown journey, the nation’s children have seen their lives stagnate, their futures decimated, and their health (both physically and mentally) plummet.

Bournbrook’s cover article for last month’s issue, titled ‘Children of lockdown: we never thought of them’, summarises the horrific consequences unnecessarily shouldered by the youngest of our society. From babies unaccustomed to basic human facial expressions, to lost friendships and shattered social skills (and, worst of all, to the brutal Americanisation of my beautiful language), it makes for truly depressing reading. Now we can be sure to add ‘toothache and untreated oral health problems’ to the list.