Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan on Saturday wanted dentistry professionals to put their heads together and come up with ways and means of leveraging technology, cutting costs and making dental care affordable for the common man.
He wanted dentists to treat the society as their major clientele and not just think of those people in sections of society who could afford the current high costs. “Technological advancement in dentistry has not kept pace when compared to other fields. Probably there is a reservation in your minds on adopting technology,” he told an impressive gathering of practitioners and students of dentistry at the inaugural of a two-day Digital Dental International Conference 2016 here on Saturday. “Probably the costs are a concern and you need to come up with solutions. Costs and time of treatment evaluation while considering adoption of new technologies are important. What is the return on investment going to be is an important question. ,” he stated.
Earlier, President of the Dental Council of India (DCI), Dr. Dibyendu Majumdar said that against a count of 292 dental colleges across India a while ago, the number had now reached 302. But sadly, he said, there were court cases against many of them. “That is why the DCI has made it mandatory for dental colleges to be attached to medical colleges. They said in Hindi that a ‘swacch mooh’ is ‘swacch swas, swasth’. In English it simply means good oral means a good breath and sign of good health,” he explained. Dr. Majumdar drew applause when he said that whether it was Telangana or Andhra Pradesh dental education in these parts of the nation was much better than in several other StatesOrganising secretary of the conference, Dr. A. Srikanth regretted that human beings forgot that the mouth was the root cause of most diseases. “Patients ask for health, but doctors too generally harp only on the beautification aspects – making teeth white, implanting tooth, root canal treatment and stuff like that but it is the overall health of the body that is to be focussed on, by ensuring oral hygiene,” he said.
