Dental News - Hong Kong: Access to dental subsidy scheme to be widened

Dental Tribune International

Wed. 3. May 2017

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HONG KONG: The age limit for the Community Care Fund scheme, which subsidises dental care for Hong Kong’s elderly population, among other assistance programmes, is set to be lowered from 75 to 70 years, fund task force chairman Dr Law Chi-kwong has announced. However, a general lack of services for this vulnerable group remains a problem in the city.

Last year, the age requirement for the scheme was already lowered from 80 to 75, giving an additional 24,600 senior citizens access to funding. However, even with this and the recently announced expansion of those eligible for aid, the sheer lack of public dental services in Hong Kong is still a limiting factor for adequate treatment for the elderly, according to experts.

Although the lower age limit will enable more people to obtain public dental care, the general capacity to provide services will remain the same. As reported by the South China Morning Post, out of the 39 government dental clinics across the city, only 11 offer emergency services to the public. This imbalance is worsened by the fact that most of the government clinics provide only very basic services for free, such as pain relief and tooth extraction, and are open to the public only for limited sessions per week, the paper wrote. As a result, elderly patients are often forced to queue in the early morning hours to beat the crowds to see a dentist.

“Dental care servicing in Hong Kong has never been subject to any serious review or any long-term planning,” Law said in this regard. “This is something that needs to be thought about.” However, the problem will probably not be solved in a few years, he stressed.

Just as in other Asian cities, Hong Kong’s population is ageing rapidly. However, while countries such as Japan and South Korea have three and four dentists per 1,000 elderly residents, respectively, Hong Kong’s dentist–population ratio is only two to 1,000.

In the population eligible for funding, problems such as tooth loss, untreated dental caries and periodontal disease are more prevalent than in the general public.

Figures from a 2011 oral health survey by the Department of Health indicate that about 40 per cent of those aged 65–74 have fewer than 20 teeth remaining and about 5.5 per cent have none.

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