October 5, 2022
KLANG – The Health Ministry will continue to come down hard on unlicensed dentists, and those with information about them should contact authorities, says Khairy Jamaluddin.
“We will continue to raid (their premises) when we receive information to put a stop to their actions.
“They can be fined a maximum of RM30,000 and jailed for a maximum of six years,” said the Health Minister.
He said there had been around 10 raids since the Dental Act 2018 (Act 804) was enforced last year.
“We recently raided a fake doctor in Setapak. I was made to understand that Setapak is a nest for fake doctors,” he said to the media after visiting the Bandar Botanik Dental Clinic to witness the pilot project for 3D Dentures.
On Sept 28, acting on The Star’s tip-off, a team of enforcers from the Health Ministry raided a beautician’s hair salon in Setapak and confiscated dental probes, dental fillings, and nickel-titanium wires that are often used for braces.
Besides offering illegal dentistry services, the beautician was also believed to have been providing various illegal dentistry courses on procedures such as veneers, whitening drips, and platelet-rich plasma injections.
The authorities took a computer with records of certificates given to people who attended the courses.
Health Ministry dental officer Dr Taufik Firdaus, who acted as the lead raiding officer, said a preliminary investigation found that the beautician, who denied having any helpers, was not registered with the Malaysian Dental Council.
In July, The Star said that the facility had been giving dental courses before giving “students” worthless certificates.
Meanwhile, Khairy said an average of 300 dentures can be produced monthly through a pilot project on denture production using 3D technology.
He said this would be possible for all dental clinics with 3D technology.
The current conventional method can only produce an average of 90 dentures per month.
The National Mouth Health Survey for adults in 2010 showed one in four adults in Malaysia use dentures due to tooth loss.
Khairy said that patients would only need to come in twice to get their dentures put in, instead of five times like they do now.
The government’s Kuala Lumpur Dental Clinic and the Bandar Botanik Dental Clinic are in the proof-of-concept stage for the project.
Khairy said in 2020, 44% of elderly patients who came to the Health Ministry’s facilities obtained dentures in about three months, while 531 dental laboratories still produced dentures conventionally.
“But with 3D technology, dentures can be done in just three hours, from the scanning phase to the printing and cleaning phase,” he said.