ALL DENTAL clinics across the country may now open.
Even in Metro Manila and Cebu City, where strict lockdown protocols are still in place, dental clinics are allowed to open under the rules of the Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine.
And yet, as provinces and towns prepare to open up essential services, we are curious to see how dental clinics would operate – if they open at all.
Many dental clinics may not be prepared to provide safe oral health care given the circumstances of the new normal.
Dentists themselves and the Philippine Dental Association (PDA) have raised a valid concern over the future of dental clinics in the country.
It is an urgent concern as well: are dental clinics able to comply – and thus open – with the strict recommendations of the PDA.
The PDA is justified and right in issuing protocols for dental clinics to follow for the protection of patients, dental staff and dentists.
The protocols include, for example, pre-contact screening of patients for possible coronavirus infection. Or the required Personal Protective Equipment or PPEs for both dentists and dental staff. And many more, as we have mentioned in previous columns.
The PDA guidelines say dentists can only work with PPEs. Will the government provide these to dentists just like they do to doctors and nurses? Or, if dentists can purchase PPEs will the government make them available to dentists?
As we all know, most or all PPE items are either difficult to acquire or are out of stock. And they are urgently needed in the front line of coronavirus care and management. Where will dentists buy PPEs, masks and gloves?
The World Health Organization says the Philippines has one of the highest fatality rate among health workers. It’s easy to see why. Our health workers are inadequately protected so much so that the Department of Health is concerned that a shortage of health workers may become an issue.
Social distancing remains, and this poses a problem in public transportation. Dental clinics employ assistants and staff who depend on public transportation which, in the pre-Covid times, were already inadequate during rush hours.
Indeed, there are many unanswered questions. Life will no longer be the same again. The new normal will be difficult for many.
Let us pray this pandemic will end soon and that an effective and safe vaccine and medications against the virus are soon available.
Until then, conventional wisdom calls for that old Filipino adage: “Dahan dahan lang.” In the Visayas, we know it as “Hinay hinay gid.”
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Dr. Joseph D. Lim is the former Associate Dean of the UE College of Dentistry, former Dean of the College of Dentistry, National University, past president and honorary fellow of the Asian Oral Implant Academy, and honorary fellow of the Japan College of Oral Implantologists. Honorary Life Member of Thai Association of Dental Implantology. For questions on dental health, e-mail jdlim2008@gmail.com or text 0917-8591515./PN
