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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

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Lengthy dental queues for Hong Kong’s low-income people

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.”

Harvey joined the Post in 2021. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a double major in Journalism and Politics and Public Administration. Prior to joining the Post, he was a freelance multimedia journalist, stringing with news outlets such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and others.
Natalie is an award-winning journalist specialising in policy analysis with a focus on Hong Kong politics. She also moderates SCMP events and is passionate about video storytelling. She is the co-author of Post Portraits – Hong Kong’s 25 years of change through the lens of the South China Morning Post (SCMP Publishers, 2023). Previously, she worked for i-Cable News (HK) and BBC Chinese (London).
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