A Māori oral health specialist is calling for change in the way New Zealanders receive dental care and says he's optimistic about "achieving equity for everyone".
Māori oral health quality and improvement group chair Justin Wall is one of the Māori health leaders who attended a meeting in Wellington this week addressing the country's "inequitable oral health system."
Speaking on TVNZ 1's Breakfast today Mr Wall said, "It's either access to services or it's financial and we have to be honest about the cost and why it costs too much.
"We are trying to come up with a way we can make dentistry affordable for life," he says.
He says Māori and people on low incomes shy away from going to the dentist because of the high cost.
One of the ways to achieve oral health equity, Mr Wall says, is targeting the people that are most in need first.
"Targeting would be one of the first ways to do it ... to get those people in the most need first and those that don't really require care last, but it never works that way, the people that don't need it get it."
"We're hoping to achieve equity for everyone. The experts that we've brought together they know the problem, everyone has a solution and it's a matter of bringing all those solutions together so we can do something about it, and we are going to."
Mr Wall says he is optimistic this will be achieved.
"Absolutely, we've got all the tools, we've got the expertise, we just need to all work together."
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