FOOTSCRAY’S ageing dental facilities face further decay unless urgent works proceed immediately, according to the Western Region Health Centre (WRHC).
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland plans to use State Parliament to drive home the need for urgent solutions to the long-running woes facing the centre.
WRHC is the key provider of emergency and general dental care to more than 10,000 adults and children in Melbourne’s west each year.
The Weekly reported in June that a dental services taskforce, chaired by western suburbs Liberal MP Andrew Elsbury, found a series of issues clouding the Footscray clinics’ future.
The report found both dental sites, at Paisley Street and Geelong Road, have inadequate access and are at risk from termites and vermin.
There is extensive rust and twisted electrical wiring in the arms of dental chairs, while upstairs surgeries are unable to operate when temperatures hit 30 degrees in summer.
One option recommended by the report is bringing together adult and child dental services – now split over two sites – to one redeveloped 12-chair dental clinic on the Paisley Street site.
WRHC chief executive Lyn Morgain said the clinics were at risk of closing if the equipment failed.
WRHC’s Nicole Bartholomeusz said many clients were refugees, mentally ill and homeless people who would miss out on treatment without public dental care. “The age of our dental buildings – built in the 1960s – and equipment does not yet make our services unsafe, but it does limit the range and type of services we can deliver, and it places uncertainty around how long we can continue to deliver dental services.”
Health Minister David Davis said the government’s first response to the report was to spend $200,000 on planning the next step.
Ms Hartland has launched a community postcard campaign calling on the government to immediately fund the rebuilding of the dental clinic.
She will deliver the cards to Premier Ted Baillieu when Parliament next sits.
