Chandigarh, May 17
With a view to providing better facilities to troops, mobile dental vans will be made available to dental formations across the country within an year. This was stated by Director-General of Dental Services, Lieut-Gen R.C. Dhir, while speaking
at the Command Military Dental Centre, Chandi Mandir, today after the inauguration of a dental laboratory complex here.
Explaining the benefits of these vans, he said troops, including officers and jawans, could avail themselves of dental treatment wherever they were stationed and the vans could return to their respective centres after a day or two.
The cost of each of these vans would be between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 17 lakh. Urging the Defence
Ministry to sanction money for the same, he said vans would have to be made available by
the Army even as the cost of fitting the equipment would be borne by them.
Latest dental chairs fitted with
modern gadgets would be provided to 185 dental establishments and all old chairs would be replaced. The setting up of radio
videography units in some of these big centres would enable dental surgeons to see X-rays on the screen before undertaking surgery.
The facility of oral implants, which cost around Rs 30,000 outside, was now available at 20-odd dental centres, including five command dental centres, for Rs 10,000.
General Dhir said setting up of induction casting machine in some of these centres was another step in modernisation.
“It works on electro-magnetic principle, as a result of which metal for making metallic bridges is melted without using any flame,” he explained. Titanium-bone plates and titanium screws were now being used in place of stainless steel in Army dental centres and unit hospitals.
Nickel titanium wires, which do not need to be adjusted frequently, would be used for braces by orthodontists, he said.
He said new dental centres would come up in Assam Rifles and the border units for the benefit of officers and jawans. Dental problems were more in the jawans hailing from Uttar Pradesh and they accounted for a majority of the patients suffering from oral cancer.
Earlier, Lieut Gen J.J. Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, inaugurated the dental laboratory complex of the Command military dental
centre.
The laboratory had been equipped with latest technology to fabricate artificial dentures, orthodontic plates, craniofacial and maxillofacial prostheses and ceramometal work. With this facility, latest specialised treatment facilities at the dental centre would be further augmented.
Special rooms had been provided for undertaking the work of casting and fitting porcelian teeth instead of just the metallic ones.
