Sir, – I believe your article about the increase of hepatitis C via health tourism represents an unbalanced view (Paul Cullen, Home News, April 24th). As providers of dental services to overseas patients, we follow very strict procedures to ensure that no infection can take place – this is in the interest of both patients and our own dental staff. Hence, all our procedures assume that patients can carry diseases unknown to them – or sometimes undeclared.
Below are a few examples of how we ensure this:
Anything that goes into the patient’s mouth is either sterilised or single-use (disposable). Sterilisation is both chemical and heat (autoclave).
Needles, gloves, masks are only used once. Needles go into a special waste needle box, other hazardous waste into another hazardous waste box. These are collected by a special waste disposal company. Nothing that has been in a patient’s mouth is mixed with any other waste or touched again after the patient left the treatment room.
In between two patients, the chair is cleaned with a disinfectant, and the non-removable components are sterilised using the chair’s own autosteril system.
As you can see, contracting the hepatitis C virus through having dental treatment with us can be ruled out.
My personal view is that non-medical contraction is much more likely, though admittedly, there are countries with less stringent procedures and also there may be clinics in any country that do not follow guidelines, but these must be rare. – Yours, etc,
Dr ILDIKÓ CSERVENYÁK,
Access Smile,
Rákóczi Utca
Budapest,
Hungary.