Dental Care

Six-year-old Mychael Greene doesn't like the look of the hooked tool that dentists use to scrape plaque from teeth, or the sour taste their latex-gloved hands leave in his mouth. But his mother, Shawn Greene, made sure her son opened wide during a recent checkup at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore. Her reason: the death earlier this year of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Prince George's County boy who died after an infection from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings accused the Bush administration yesterday of failing to provide adequate dental care to poor children, including a Prince George's boy who died after a tooth infection spread to his brain, and promised to make a personal call to a top Medicaid official to demand answers. "My resolve is strong," said Cummings at a Northwest Baltimore community health clinic where he promoted a bill he introduced to expand dental services for poor children and train more pediatric dentists.

Jade Nguyen is returning this week to Vietnam, the country she and her family fled 22 years ago, to provide a rare service in her former homeland -- dental care.Nguyen, 27, is one of two dozen University of Maryland Dental School students and faculty members who left yesterday to spend two weeks in Hanoi giving basic dental care to more than 500 Vietnamese."I'm excited to be able to go and help children who don't have these services," said Nguyen, a dental hygiene student whose only other trip to Vietnam was in 1994 as a tourist.

MAJURO, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- Dr. Jack Shannon, the last U.S. Public Health Service dentist in the Marshall Islands, would like to be brightening smiles all over the land.Instead, the wiry, crew-cut former missionary, who heads the only dental practice in this former U.S. Trust Territory, spends most of his time in a cramped hospital clinic here pulling rotten teeth."I've seen 6-year-olds with 18 decayed teeth," he says. "The most [teeth] they can have is 24."An increasingly Western diet heavy with highly refined food and sugar arrived with the Americans after World War II, and now it is turning Marshallese teeth to mush.

For almost two years, Salena Donohoe and a scary-looking purple dinosaur named Flossy the Flossasaurus have been teaching North County children from low-income families about the evil of tooth decay and the good of brushing their teeth.Donohoe, 28, is a volunteer with a pilot program at the county Department of Health's North County dental clinic in Glen Burnie.Conceived by the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore, the program enlists peer counselors to preach early dental care for preschoolers to families in Women, Infants and Children (WIC)

Gasoline tax cut mere drop in the tankThe Republican-controlled Congress is stampeding to repeal the 4.3 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax increase and the Democrats are too timid to resist. This in spite of the generally understood economic facts that the budget deficit and gas consumption are too high, while both the price of and tax on gasoline are too low.If left alone, gas prices will moderate. Unfortunately, election year grandstanding will cost the American people $5 billion in revenue so the average driver can save the price of a tank or two of gasoline.

AS MILLIONS of working Americans already know, having a job does not mean having access to health care. A new survey by the Bethesda-based Center for Health Affairs has found that some 41 million Americans, mostly middle class, are unable to obtain medical care for at least one important service.Unlike many such surveys, this one went beyond basic questions about the ability to see a doctor to include other essential services like surgery, dental care, eyeglasses, prescription drugs or mental health treatment.

Teeth get taken for granted. People postpone or can't afford trips to the dentist, and health insurance policies often omit dental benefits. Now years of collective neglect -- like a nagging toothache -- have reached a crisis in Maryland.The state's Medicaid dental benefits are among the worst in the nation. A new study has found that more than half of the cavities in privately insured Maryland children aren't treated.People in large rural areas of the state have no fluoride in their drinking water and wind up with lots of cavities.

IF YOU BREAK your leg, an emergency room will treat you. But suffer the excruciating pain of an abscessed tooth and unless you have adequate dental insurance or can afford to pay for care, you're out of luck. The most a hospital will offer you is a pain killer or two and maybe an antibiotic for the infection.Dental care is a low priority in Maryland, and the state has the statistics to prove it. Although the state ranks 27th in the number of people who contract oral cancer, poor screening for the problem pushes Maryland to fourth in the country in the number of deaths.

Denise Troutman hadn't seen a dentist for five years and had been in constant pain for the past eight months, which makes her typical of the hundreds of people who have found their way to an old Navy hospital ship to take advantage of a free medical and dental clinic.When the organizers of the clinic opened their two-week program -- which ends tomorrow evening -- they were expecting their biggest job would be to provide immunizations, maybe thousands of them. It didn't happen; only dozens of children in need of shots have turned up so far. But the dental clinic has been turning away 60 or more people every day."

Dental student Andrew Swiatowicz stood next to the extra-large set of model teeth positioned in a corner of the National Museum of Dentistry and asked young onlookers how many times a day they should brush. Two or three, belted out the kindergartners from George Washington Elementary School in Southwest Baltimore. It seems like an obvious question, but museum officials say not every kid from the poorer parts of Baltimore and Maryland - those who rarely or never see a dentist - know the answer.

No mother should ever have to bury a child. No child should ever die of a toothache. That tragic and unnecessary fate befell 12-year-old Deamonte Driver and his family in Prince George's County. His death last year, when an untreated tooth infection spread to his brain, prompted an effort by Maryland to ensure that poor and indigent residents receive the type of preventive and restorative dental services that would have saved the boy's life. Today, the state is finally infusing much-needed funds into the Medicaid system, to ensure care for children from disadvantaged families.

The first dental clinic run by Harford County opened officially last week in Edgewood with a ribbon cutting, but the facility has been treating patients since March 31. That has been long enough for 8-year-old Razell Fogle to have a cracked tooth repaired and another filled. He smiled broadly, showing off his recently cleaned teeth, as he helped cut the ribbon. With no dental insurance, Julia Fogle had no idea when she would be able to find money for her son's dental needs, until the clinic, in Edgewood Plaza Shopping Center on Hanson Road, offered her free care.

About 12 years ago, Carrie Lemon started losing teeth. One by one, to curb pain, Lemon had most of her teeth extracted. Today, at 72, she has only six left. Eating has become a daily chore, and Lemon wants desperately to be fitted for a set of dentures. "I've just been going from one dentist to another, but all of them tell me that our medical system doesn't cover it," Lemon said. "I don't have the money to get them." With the number of Americans over age 60 expected to increase by 70 percent by 2025, experts say dental care for seniors is a major issue - one that will only become more acute as the population ages.

Howard County's innovative health access plan for uninsured residents will also have a dental component, county officials announced yesterday. Residents who enroll in the Healthy Howard program, due to begin Oct. 1, will be eligible for discounts of 35 percent to 50 percent from 75 dentists and orthodontists who practice in the county and participate in the Aetna dental program, said Mike Bucci, marketing vice president for Aetna, who made the announcement in...

"Show me your smile," the dentist, wielding a flashlight, said to the slightly apprehensive 3-year-old girl standing before her. "You brought your teeth with you?" At that, the little girl grinned. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all. The dentist, Dr. Patricia L. Bell-McDuffie, director of oral health services for the Baltimore City Health Department, was one of several medical professionals who gathered this morning at an East Baltimore community center to inspect the mouths of about 300 children ages 3 and 4 and enrolled in Head Start programs.

The Harford County Health Department will open a dental clinic early next year that will provide care for some of the 7,000 children who are eligible for medical assistance but have little access to a dentist. The number of children receiving medical assistance has increased by 238 percent since 2000 and there could be many other eligible youths who are not enrolled in the program, said Dr. Andrew Bernstein, Harford County's health officer. "There is a real need for this service," Bernstein said.

The state needs to spend about $40 million over the next two years to increase reimbursement rates to dentists who serve poor and uninsured children, according to a committee convened after a Prince George's County boy died this year of an untreated tooth infection. It is the hope of the Dental Action Committee that a boost in reimbursement -- the state pays $9 for dental sealants, which cost dentists about $40 -- will encourage more dentists to participate in the state's Medicaid program, a federal-state initiative that covers health-care costs for low-income families with children, and other disadvantaged people.

Alyce Driver shed silent tears at a news conference yesterday to announce new pediatric dental programs aimed at preventing deaths such as her son Deamonte's, who died in February at the age of 12 after an unchecked tooth infection spread to his brain. The Prince George's County woman has avoided attention since her son's death forced lawmakers here and in Washington to focus on improving dental care for children of poor families. But she attended the event at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore to witness something positive come from her loss.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings accused the Bush administration yesterday of failing to provide adequate dental care to poor children, including a Prince George's boy who died after a tooth infection spread to his brain, and promised to make a personal call to a top Medicaid official to demand answers. "My resolve is strong," said Cummings at a Northwest Baltimore community health clinic where he promoted a bill he introduced to expand dental services for poor children and train more pediatric dentists.