It can take up to three years in Toronto for a low-income senior to receive simple dental services such as a checkup or cleaning.
With that in mind, Toronto-Danforth NDP MPP Peter Tabuns tabled a petition in the Ontario legislature this week calling for unspent money earmarked for children’s dental care under the province’s Poverty Reduction Strategy to go toward impoverished adults.
For Gerald Applewhaite, 70, who lives on a government pension in assisted housing, that kind of coverage could mean less pain — and more teeth.
Applewhaite can’t afford a dentist, so he had a tooth extracted recently by students at the University of Toronto’s faculty of dentistry for $50.
Lately, it pains him to chew on one side of his mouth. After months of waiting, he has an appointment Thursday to have a second tooth pulled at a Toronto Public Health clinic in Scarborough.
But he is still on the waiting list for a cleaning.
“I was told that I would have to wait three years,” he said.
At any given time, roughly 5,000 seniors are vying for an appointment in one of Toronto Public Health’s 23 clinics. Wait times for non-urgent care vary across the city: in the east end the average waittime is two-and-a-half years; in the west end, nine months.
Public health officials say seniors needing urgent care, such as those in extreme pain or whose dentures have broken, can be seen within 24 hours. But with an aging population and increased demand, even that may not always be possible.
There are only three clinics in Scarborough, said Dr. Michele Wong, a manager of dental and oral health services at TPH. Dentists would recommend one checkup a year, but in the current situation, that isn’t possible, she said.
As well, many low-income seniors are newcomers who barely speak English and are waiting to see a dentist who speaks their language. The east end, for example, has a large population of Cantonese-speaking seniors.
“This is a vulnerable population and their situation could become more acute if not treated,” said Wong.
The problem mainly comes down to funding, said TPH spokeswoman Kris Scheuer. In 2012, about 7,000 seniors were treated at a cost of approximately $5 million.
The free dental program for low-income seniors is 100 per cent municipally funded, she explained, while TPH’s free program for kids from low-income families, which does not have a wait list, receives funds from both the city and province.
“For some seniors, the only option is the TPH dental program,” she said. “It is a small program targeting the most vulnerable seniors.”
Tabuns, who has collected 3,500 signatures on his petition so far, points out that the $45 million dental fund under the province’s Poverty Reduction Strategy excludes impoverished adults, yet the money is desperately needed.
Critics have argued the fund’s eligibility criteria for low-income families are too rigid, with much of the money unspent. Between 2009 and 2012, earlier reports revealed, the Liberal government took $15.4 million earmarked for the emergency dental care program for children and placed the funds in other unrelated programs.
Those same documents showed that, by 2012, the yearly contribution was closer to $33 million. Tabuns said some of the money that goes unspent on children’s dental care each year should be invested in dental care for adults, including seniors.
“We’ve been finding that dental care is one of the top issues seniors are raising with us, saying ‘If we have bad teeth, we can’t eat and if we can’t eat, we get sick.’”
Terry Roberts, a 67-year-old east-end community housing resident, has rotting teeth. Like Applewhaite, he also chews on one side.
Roberts will be getting an extraction soon, which falls under the emergency care description, but he will have to wait years for a checkup.
“It seems to me it would be cheaper for the health-care system to take care of the population’s dental needs,” he said. “As we reach my age and the condition of my teeth, the bacteria that grow into the gums can get into the bloodstream and affect the heart. So then, you’re a strain on the existing (health) system.”
What the country needs, he says, “is a Tommy Douglas for dental care.”