60% jump in low-income earners getting municipal dental care
The number of low-income adults getting free emergency dental care has jumped by 60 per cent in the last year, Mayor John Tory announced Monday.
That's because in May the city opened up all 23 of its publicly-funded dental clinics to recipients of Ontario Works. Prior to that, low-income adults had only five public clinics to choose from.
"Dental cavities and tooth decay can cause pain, infection, and lead to further gum, mouth and health problems. They can also impair important functions to our well-being such as eating, drinking and speaking," said Dr. Howard Shapiro, Toronto's Acting Medical Officer of Health, in a statement about the expanded initiative.
In the first half of last year, 468 low-income adults took advantage of publicly-run dental clinics. In the same period this year, that number jumped to 768, Tory said.
Expanding the list of available clinics came with no increased costs, Tory said, because the facilities were all already up and running, although he warned that could change in the future as more people use the services.
The expansion is a joint effort by Toronto Public Health and Toronto Employment and Social Services.
"This is the kind of collaborative, creative thinking that we're going to have to use over and over again — yes, sometimes with the addition of additional funds, as in student nutrition — but sometimes just by using common sense," Tory said.
