THE Katungul Aboriginal medical service is using a couple of innovative programs to boost its dental services with visiting dentists.
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Both the “Closing the Gap” program of the Sydney dental hospital and not for profit “Filling the Gap” program have been utilised in recent months bringing dentists to Narooma from as far away as England and Ireland.
Over the past couple of weeks, visiting dentist Grainne Mulcare from Ireland and dental assistant Melissa Donnelly from Leura in the Blue Mountains have been seeing patients at the Aboriginal health service.
“It’s great to be able to help the clinics and we can feel we are doing some good in the short term of two weeks, reducing waiting lists,” Mulcare said.
“It’s really rewarding. The staff and patients are very appreciative of what we do.”
Katungul chief executive Jon Rogers said the having the visiting dentist in the health service’s dental clinic in Narooma did reduce the waiting list for patients.
It also allowed the service’s own dentist to go out into the community with the mobile health van, he said.
Overseas dentists such as Mulcare paid their own way to Australia and then the programs paid for their accommodation and a car.
Mulcare said after her two-week stint at Katungul, she was going straight back to Ireland and her work at the practice in the town of Ballybunion in County Kerry.
This was her third trip to Australia and she had enjoyed her time here.
“You have a lovely golf course and so do we back in my hometown where our golf course is ranked in the top 10 in Ireland with sand dunes featured as it is also next to the beach,” she said.
Katungul meanwhile had ambitious plans to expand with an office at Batemans Bay and at a time when government funding was being reduced, the dental Gap programs were even more important, Rogers said.