It comes as the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said the state of children’s oral health is nothing short of dire.
Figures from the Office for Health Improvement and Inequalities show that in the year to March 2023 there were around 55 total admissions to hospital in Southend for the extraction of children’s teeth.
Of these, approximately 15 were caries exports.
Numbers are rounded to the nearest five.
Overall, the tooth extraction rate in Southend was 132 per 100,000 children – below the national rate of 360 per 100,000.
In Basildon, there were an estimated 85 total hospital admissions in Basildon for extraction of children’s teeth in the year to March 2023.
Of these, approximately 40 were caries exports. Numbers are rounded to the nearest five.
Overall, the tooth extraction rate in Basildon was 178 per 100,000 children – below the national rate of 360 per 100,000.
Across all NHS hospitals in England, there were 47,581 tooth extractions for patients under the age of 19.
Around 66% of these discharges – or 31,165 – were for the primary diagnosis of tooth decay, a 17% increase on the previous 12 months.
David Fothergill, chair of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “These stark figures reveal that a lack of access to affordable dentistry is having a worrying impact on the state of children’s teeth.
“The fact that, due to the severity of tooth decay, an average of 119 operations are carried out each day to remove decayed teeth in children and teenagers is worrying and also adds to the current pressures on our health service.
“Untreated dental care remains one of the most prevalent diseases affecting children and young people’s ability to speak, eat, play and socialize.”
Separately, figures from the government’s annual oral health survey of year 6 children showed that 16.2% had developed tooth decay, with those affected having decay in at least two teeth on average.
In Southend, around 9.8% of children aged 10 to 11 had tooth decay.
Eddie Crouch, president of the British Dental Association, said ministers had “failed to understand that attrition and deprivation go hand in hand”.
He said: “This government likes to talk about prevention but has delivered nothing. It has promised access for all but it looks set to throw money at target sites in rural England.
“Our younger patients continue to pay the price.”
Dr Helen Stewart, health improvement officer at the RCPCH, added that the state of children’s oral health in England is nothing short of dire.
He said the link between deprivation and tooth decay was “undeniable”, as children living in lower-income areas were more than twice as likely to develop tooth decay as their more affluent peers.
The figures also revealed geographical variations, with 23% of children in Yorkshire and the Humber reporting tooth decay compared to 12% in the South West.
In East Anglia, 13% of the cohort reported having caries.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Access to dentistry is improving and last year around 800,000 more children visited an NHS dentist.”
They added that £3 billion is invested every year in NHS dental provision and plans have been announced to increase dental training places by 40%.
“We are also taking preventive measures such as expanding water fluoridation programs to reduce the number of children who develop tooth decay,” they said.
