A free dental care day in West Auckland saw hundreds of people lining up to get a check-up. Last year Dental Care West treated 100 people, but this year more than twice the numbers turned out.
These people have been waiting here since 3am in the morning. But it wasn't for Christmas shopping, it was to see the dentist for free.
“I've been here for about 6:30am and I saw on Facebook that's free, so I thought it would come on up and give it ago.”
“Probably I need to take out my rotten teeth.”
“That's just so amazing that we can just come here, I mean who does that? No one does that.”
Dental Care West in West Auckland have been doing this every year for 6 years.
“We give each client, is treating one tooth either one filling or one extraction and you know it's a good way to help out the community and another way to say merry Christmas,” says the West Dental Care receptionist.
Fillings and Extractions cost up to $250 each and Dr Scott Waghorn says these procedures are at the top of priority list.
“I think dental care is so expensive, so they need to kind of bring it down bring the price down so that it can be affordable, otherwise you wouldn't have long lines and ques about this at all if they didn’t offer it for free.”
Dr Scott Waghorn says, “The major blockage for people especially Māori is the cost of dentistry is a major and the other is the fear of dentistry, so certainly today address the cost because there is none, but there still is that fear of the pain. We've got such nice people here.”
Dental Assiatnt Hariata Paki says, “I'm here today to get my teeth checked out, it’s something I hate doing and something I've put off for a long time.”
“Today we have eight dentists on deck, we'd like to see at least 100 people but of we see a hundred and fifty ka pai,” says Dr Waghorn.
Dr Waghorn is expecting to see around 150 patients today and hopes to bring a Christmas joy with every smile.
