The Dean, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Linda Oge Okoye, has identified infrastructure gaps and quackery as part of the challenges bedeviling dentistry practice in Nigeria
She stated that procuring modern equipment and digitalising operations were very expensive, adding that training a dental surgeon was higher than training in any other field.
Okoye, who is the Chairman, Association of Nigeria Dental Deans (the Dean of Deans), told The Guardian during the third annual scientific conference of the faculty, held at the University of Nigeria, Enugu campus, that to remain relevant in the practice, a dental surgeon must always improve skills.
“It costs like 10 times what you use to train a medical doctor to train a dental surgeon. There is the challenge of acquiring the skill continuously. There is quackery in the system whereby unqualified people capitalise on the absence of a dental surgeon to perform services not known to them. These people pose in diverse forms to be the oral healthcare giver; they pose to be the ones to have the solution when there is no dentist. A dental surgeon is different from a dental technologist. The public is deceived; they don’t know who is who and it is a challenge,” she explained.
Speaking further on the challenge of infrastructure, she stated that the faculty, the only one saddled with the training of dental surgeons in the Southeast, was desirous to train more.
“The number we train is still very small. We have enough manpower to train more.”
We want to improve. We want our quota increased to enable us to do more so as to deliver exceptional oral healthcare,” she added.
On the theme of the two day scientific conference, ‘The Intersection of Digital dentistry and Traditional Techniques’, Okoye stated that it was a deliberate acknowledgment of the crossroads at which the profession now stands.
“Dentistry, like every other field in healthcare, is experiencing an unprecedented integration of digital technologies. Artificial intelligence, teledentistry, 3Dimaging, and computer-aided design are no longer futuristic abstractions; they are realities shaping contemporary practice.
“But as practitioners within an African context, and more specifically within our Nigerian healthcare environment, we must not lose sight of the intrinsic value embedded in traditional techniques not as relics of the past, but as enduring tools adapted to the cultural, infrastructural, and socio-economic contours of our communities,” she said.
She encouraged participants at the conference to embrace the best evolving digital dentistry and enhance the traditional techniques by incorporating them.
Chairman of the conference, Prof. Basden Onwubere, while congratulating the faculty for organising the conference, said it offered a platform for students, lecturers and practitioners to learn.
The Professor of Medicine and Consultant Cardiologist also tasked the Federal Government on the need to adequately fund the education and health sectors to enable them perform optimally.
He said: “Education and health are key and should be given priority by any government. The Faculty of Dentistry combines both education and health. But it happens that the area is so much neglected by the government as they receive the lowest in budgets every year
“So, they need to increase the budgets on education and health. This is because everybody needs good health; everybody needs to be educated as well. It is very shameful that faculties and institutions are looking for resources to increase quota. Government will award construction of roads worth billions of naira but cannot replicate the same in the health and educational sectors.”
