SWOT Analysis of Dental Health Workforce in India: A Dental alarm

Context: India faces an acute shortage of health personnel. Together with inequalities in distribution of health workers, dental health workers also become a part contributing to it impeding the progress towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Aim: To assess dental health-workforce distribution, identify inequalities in dental health-workers provision and report the impact of this mal distribution in India. Materials and Methods: Situational analysis done by using the primary data from the records of Dental Council of India. Results: In India, 0.088% of dental health worker per 1000 population exists. Inequalities in the distribution of dentists exist in India. Certain states are experiencing an acute shortage of dental health personnel whereas certain cities are over fledged with dentists like Karnataka, Maharastra, Tamilnadu being states with high concentration & Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal being the least. Conclusion: Although the production of health workers has expanded greatly in recent years by increase in number of dental colleges the problems of imbalances in their distribution persist. In the race of increasing dentist population ratio in total, inequitable distribution of appropriately trained, motivated and supported dentists gives a mere feel of saturation in jobs making youngsters to not to choose dentistry as a career giving an alarm.