Pandemic dental delays in the N.W.T. have turned some tooth issues into emergencies

Some people in the Northwest Territories are still struggling to access dental care almost three years after service to communities was suspended for the pandemic. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, dental visits to some Beaufort Delta communities stopped for close to two years. While dental travel was paused, Indigenous Services Canada expanded eligibility for medical travel for dental problems to include non-urgent dental needs like cleanings and cavity fillings, but it was a complicated and often slow process.

Dr. Chan Chin is a dentist with Western Arctic Dental Clinic in Inuvik, which usually provides dental services throughout the region. He said they started getting back to those communities in September of 2022, and have been overwhelmed by the need.

"We basically are just seeing all the emergencies, all the complicated restoration that hasn't been done for two years," he said. 

"All the toothaches, all the teeth that need to be extracted have increased. Probably a lot of what we could have prevented, because of that stop of two years, became an emergency." 

In 2021, Andrea Keogak noticed that her four-year-old daughter Hailey had two large cavities.

When she went to her local health centre in Sachs Harbour to ask for a referral to Inuvik to get them filled, she said the nurse originally refused, saying cavities weren't serious enough to qualify for medical travel.

Keogak says the nurse told her, "When she's having trouble eating, she can come back and see me."

Keogak said she had to send a letter to the Beaufort Delta Health Authority to get the referral for her daughter.

Reached for comment, David Maguire, spokesperson for the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority, said he was unable to comment on the specific case. He said only that the authority "has worked with NIHB to provide communications to staff across the system to clarify the process for accessing dental care and services for those in remote communities that do not have a resident dentist."

Even after Keogak was able to get a referral for her daughter, the problems continued. 

At first, she was told that the cavities could be filled in late 2021 when a specialist in general anesthesia would be in Inuvik. 

When she didn't hear from the dental clinic, she followed up with the dentist in Inuvik only to find that they lost her daughter's referral to the specialist. So seven months after getting the initial referral, the pair went back to Inuvik to get temporary fillings and a new referral.

In the end, Hailey didn't get her teeth fixed permanently until January of 2023, a year and a half after she'd initially asked to see the dentist.