Akash Sama­roo

Laws to pro­tect the pub­lic against un­reg­is­tered and of­ten­times un­der­qual­i­fied den­tists are now be­fore the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee, af­ter be­ing sent by the Cab­i­net for ur­gent con­sid­er­a­tion.

And the Den­tal Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (DBTT) is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rance Deyals­ingh to bring laws to Par­lia­ment to help them fight a fresh wave of un­reg­is­tered den­tists, who many in the in­dus­try say are do­ing bad work at cheap prices.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Den­tal As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­DA) has joined the call and re­cent­ly put out a video on so­cial me­dia warn­ing the pub­lic about “den­tal quacks,” as they re­fer to them, in the in­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to TT­DA vice pres­i­dent Dr Shiv­al Jan­kee, a “den­tal quack” is any­one who does not have a den­tal de­gree or is reg­is­tered as a den­tist. He said while some may be den­tal tech­ni­cians, that on­ly means they can deal in fab­ri­ca­tions, mean­ing they can­not treat pa­tients.

Jan­kee said the scary thing is where some of them learn the pro­ce­dures.

“YouTube now cov­ers a lot of things from A to Z on den­tistry. Any type of pro­ce­dure is there, so it’s easy for these un­reg­is­tered peo­ple to watch these videos, pick up their tools and prac­tice on peo­ple.”

Jan­kee said what makes them even more dan­ger­ous is that they are much cheap­er to vis­it than a reg­is­tered den­tist, which makes them more at­trac­tive to those who are strug­gling fi­nan­cial­ly.

He showed Guardian Me­dia some Face­book ad­ver­tise­ments where es­tab­lish­ments were charg­ing as lit­tle as $1,000 to in­stall braces.

While ad­ver­tis­ing in it­self is against their in­dus­try reg­u­la­tions, the TT­DA ex­ec­u­tive said the cheap op­tion of­ten leads to com­pli­ca­tions.

“Be­fore you put in braces, you have to make sure there is no gum dis­ease or no cav­i­ties. It is detri­men­tal if you don’t do this and right now, pa­tients are com­ing in and we have to tell them we can­not save the dam­aged tooth be­cause of botched treat­ments,” Jan­kee said.

He not­ed that giv­en that these prac­ti­tion­ers are un­li­censed, there is very lit­tle one can do in terms of seek­ing re­dress.

“An un­reg­is­tered den­tist isn’t reg­u­lat­ed by a con­trol board, so they don’t have any sani­ti­sa­tion stan­dards to ad­here to, which is one of our ma­jor con­cerns in this pan­dem­ic.”

The den­tists said He­pati­tis and HIV can be eas­i­ly trans­mit­ted if prop­er pro­ce­dure isn’t fol­lowed when us­ing equip­ment.

How­ev­er, un­der cur­rent laws, what these prac­ti­tion­ers are do­ing is tech­ni­cal­ly not il­le­gal.

“Any­one can set up shop, I can, you can, any­one,” said Dr Nathan Ali, TT­DA trea­sur­er.

It’s why the DBTT wants ro­bust laws to deal with this. Pres­i­dent Dr Dhar­men­dra Ro­hit said this has been a prob­lem for many years.

“The on­ly way we can deal with it is leg­isla­tive changes, be­cause right now, if we have to per­se­cute a ‘quack’, we need a pa­tient to make a re­port to the po­lice and that re­port comes like an as­sault and then the po­lice has three months to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter but that may not be high on the of­fi­cer’s agen­da.”

Ro­hit said if the po­lice do fol­low up, the DBTT must then ap­ply to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for per­mis­sion to take ac­tion. Ro­hit said amend­ments have been sub­mit­ted to the Min­is­ter of Health to change that process.

“So if there is a ‘quack’ op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly, the coun­cil can now act im­me­di­ate­ly with­out hav­ing to go through the DPP of­fice.”

Ro­hit said those amend­ments have been ap­proved by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and now they are wait­ing for the Den­tal Act to be amend­ed in Par­lia­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Deyals­ingh on the mat­ter, he said, “It’s be­fore the F&GP Com­mit­tee as sent by Cab­i­net for ur­gent con­sid­er­a­tion.”