Plymouth residents perform DIY extractions

Due to an increased urgency of dental health care, residents in Plymouth are conducting at-home extractions. A local councillor has unveiled that residents are consuming drugs and alcohol to help prevent the pain; as a result, an investigation into Plymouth’s dental health care is being conducted by the city’s council select committee.

In October 2019, the waiting list for NHS-funded dental services in Plymouth reached fourteen thousand, leading to increased pressure and demands for a response from the government.

Dave Cottam, the British Dental Association’s chair of the general dental practice, stated: “Whenever Governments fail to invest in NHS dentistry, desperate patients fall back on DIY alternatives. For every vacancy left unfilled, thousands of patients go untreated. These access problems aren’t inevitable, but the logical result of a decade of underfunding and broken contracts. Across England NHS dentistry is failing the very patients who need us most. Council leaders are showing the kind of leadership patients desperately need to see from Westminster.”