Restaurants, cafés and pubs will be named and shamed unless they make food portions smaller or less sweet, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has said. They must play a part in tackling Britain’s obesity problem. But the BDA’s Mick Armstrong dismissed it as ‘tough talk on sugar’, which was no substitute for concerted action on ‘taxation, marketing, product reformulation and public education’.
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Food and drink manufacturer Nestlé has taken steps to withdraw its ‘The Smile Factory’ advertising campaign following an appeal from leading oral health organisation the British Society of Dental Hygiene and Therapy (BSDHT). President of the BSDHT, Michaela ONeill, believes this swift and decisive action should be a catalyst for other sweet manufacturers in reviewing their own advertising campaigns.
The British Dental Association (BDA) has won concessions from NHS England after failings by subcontractor Capita left many practitioners unable to attach performers to contracts. NHS England have agreed to extend the two month window for claims relating to new performers to the middle of 2017. Officials have also pledged to bring down the current backlog of applications.
A new process of dealing with concerns has been introduced by the General Dental Council (GDC) to encourage resolution between the dental professional and the patient. Each year, the GDC receives hundreds of concerns that could be resolved locally without it becoming a fitness to practise case if there was an agreement in place. The new process is known as GDC NHS concerns handling.
Read more: GDC starts new way to deal with patient complaints
BDA Northern Ireland has succeeded in putting a halt to a revised Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) inspection process, arguing that the revised system was not based on robust evidence and data. The BDA argued that the new system would create an unnecessary duplication of regulation for dentists.
A “profoundly dishonest and utterly incompetent” unregistered dentist has been jailed for bungling operations and causing serious damage to eight of his patients at an East Yorkshire practice. Ronnie Barogiannis, 44, was sentenced to five and a half years at Hull Crown Court for fraud and assault causing actual bodily harm.