Toothless in England campaigners for NHS dentistry
MARK JONES of Toothless in England says the devastating report from MPs on Britain’s worsening dental crisis shows we need immediate action — and explains what must be done
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Over the past four years, Toothless in England has highlighted the deepening crisis in NHS dentistry, exposing the profound suffering of patients and the apparent lack of resolve from successive governments and NHS England to address the dental crisis. Despite some policy promises, the plight of dental patients remains dire in 2025, with access to care still elusive for many, perpetuating a public health emergency that affects both individuals and society at large.
Dental patients continue to suffer in 2025, a stark reminder of the government and NHS England’s failure to deliver systemic change. The statistics are grim: up to 97 per cent of new patients seeking NHS dental care are turned away, and 90 per cent of practices are not accepting new adult NHS patients. Waiting lists stretch to years, forcing desperate measures — with some patients resorting to DIY dentistry with pliers, while others travel abroad for “affordable” treatment.
Stories abound of crumbling teeth, chronic pain, untreated infections, deaths caused by dental sepsis and undiagnosed mouth cancers, with vulnerable groups like the elderly and low-income families hit hardest. For instance, cancer patients face delays in life-saving treatments due to inaccessible dental check-ups, a ripple effect Toothless has repeatedly highlighted.
The consequences extend beyond oral health. Untreated dental issues cost the economy through lost productivity, burden A&E departments with non-dental emergencies, and widen health inequalities.
A Palestinian girl cries as Palestinians who escaped from the attacks of the Israeli army and took shelter in the Khan Yunis, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and who are struggling with hunger wait in line to receive meals distributed by charities in Khan Yunis, Gaza on December 27, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said the humanitarian aid organization.
UNICEF, the United Nations agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid for children, released a statement Thursday decrying the recent deaths of Gazan children, particularly those who have perished because of cold and lack of adequate shelter.
“Cold injuries, such as frostbite and hypothermia, pose grave risks to young children in tents and other makeshift shelters that are ill-equipped for freezing weather. For newborns, infants, and medically vulnerable children, the danger is even more acute,” said UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder.
“With temperatures expected to drop further in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that more children’s lives will be lost to the inhumane conditions they are enduring, which offer no protection from the cold,” he added.
The Quds News Network reported Thursday, citing the head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, that four Gazan newborns have died in the past few days because of low temperatures and lack of shelter.
“These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” said Beigbeder.
One of those babies was Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old girl, who died Sunday “from the extreme cold” in a tent where her forcibly displaced family is sheltering on a beach in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated “safe zone” for displaced Palestinians that has repeatedly come under attack.
Sila’s father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told The Associated Press that the family attempted to keep the baby warm as the temperatures fell to 48°F (9°C)—below the fatal threshold for hypothermia—in their unsealed tent on cold ground.
“It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn’t even take it,” al-Faseeh said. “We couldn’t stay warm.”
Over 14,500 children have reportedly been killed since October 7, 2023 as of mid-December, according to UNICEF, though the Gaza Government Media Office cites a higher figure.
The U.S. government successfully sought the retraction of a report from an organization monitoring food crises that warned of looming famine in north Gaza under what the report called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” according to Thursday reporting from The Associated Press. The move drew concern from aid groups, per AP.
In November, more than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned that humanitarian assistance entering the enclave had “fallen to an all-time low” due to Israel’s continued blockade.
The situation has also exacted a punishing psychological toll on the children of Gaza. A report from the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management released in November found that, of the more than 500 Palestinian children it surveyed in Gaza last summer, 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, and 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more “show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness.”
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington speaks at an anti-racism rally and march in central London organised by Stand Up To Racism and trade unions, March 16, 2024
MPs have joined disability activists calling for a public inquiry into deaths linked to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP has tabled an early day motion urging the government to set up the probe.
It states: “That this House notes the shocking evidence published by John Pring in his recent book [on] the harm, too often leading to fatalities, inflicted on disabled people by the DWP since the introduction of the work capability assessment.”
It calls on the government to establish an independent public inquiry into the role played by ministers, civil servants and advisers and their culpability for the suffering identified in this research.
Labour’s Jon Trickett, Mary Kelly Foy and Ian Lavery; SDLP’s Claire Hanna; and DUP’s Jim Shannon have sponsored the motion. Labour MP Grahame Morris has also backed it.
A Palestinian child wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is treated in a hospital in Deir al-Balah, September 23, 2024
MORE women and children have been killed by Israel in Gaza in the last 12 months than perished in the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past 20 years, damning new research published by Oxfam today shows.
The charity highlights conservative figures that estimate 6,000 women and 11,000 children in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military in the past year.
But the numbers exclude those among the 20,000 who are unidentified or missing.
No other conflict has caused such a high number of child or women fatalities within a 12-month period, over the past two decades.
More than 1.7 million households plan on keeping their heating off this year, survey reveals
LIVES will be lost, campaigners warned today after a survey revealed that more than 1.7 million households do not plan on turning on their heating this year.
The number of those who said they will keep the heating off in polling for Uswitch is nearly double the 972,000 who said they did not heat their homes last year.
Fifty-five per cent of those blamed the continued rise of the cost of living, while 25 per cent of those over 65 said their decision followed the loss of winter fuel payments.
Another one million households will not turn on the heating until December to keep costs down, according to the poll.
About 43 per cent of households said they will only turn the heating on if they are too cold while 31 per cent will only heat some rooms in their home.
