Calls to fix Hong Kong’s free dental service, where patients wait 10 hours just to register to see a dentist
- Elderly patients must return multiple times because dentists will extract only one tooth on each visit
- Poor patients say they endure long waiting times because they cannot afford to go to private dentists
03:11
Lengthy dental queues for Hong Kong’s low-income people
Hong Kong retiree Lau Ka-chuen, 83, had a bad toothache and was prepared to lose one of his last two teeth.
To have it extracted free of charge, he went to a government dental clinic in Tsuen Wan at 2pm on Thursday to join the queue to register.
He was second in line, but now had to wait 10 hours before the clinic staff would begin registering patients at midnight. He would actually see the dentist only on Friday.
The registration system at Hong Kong’s government dental clinics came under fire recently because of the long waiting time patients endured, with calls to ease their plight.
Having been through the tedious process several times over the past two years, Lau said he was used to it.
“I’ve been here more than 10 times to have my teeth removed,” he told the Post. “I have no income. The fee in private clinics is HK$800 [US$102] to HK$2,000 per tooth. I cannot afford that.”
