You can try it. Throw a pithy sentence into the discussion and hope that no one knows whether it is actually correct anyway. At least that’s how it seemed when CDU leader Friedrich Merz stated in a talk show about asylum seekers last September: “They sit at the doctor and have their teeth remade, and the German citizens next door don’t get any appointments.” Who knows exactly what the dentists’ waiting rooms and the refugees’ dentures look like?
In fact, experts at the time were quick to point out that refugees have very limited access to dental care. But how often they actually sit in the dentist’s chair was unclear. Researchers led by Kayvan Bozorgmehr from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Bielefeld University have now presented initial data. Their survey of almost 900 asylum seekers from Berlin and Baden-Württemberg showed that almost 40 percent of them had visited a dentist in Germany in the past twelve months. Roughly the same number had never seen the inside of a local dental practice, although the majority of them had already been in Germany for more than a year. This means that the care provided to asylum seekers differs significantly from that of the German population as a whole. According to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than 80 percent of people living here visit a dentist within a year.
Treating advanced tooth decay is more expensive than early-stage treatment
The in Journal of Health Monitoring However, the published figures are only comparable to a limited extent. They come from different surveys; the samples were not identically composed. In addition, the data on asylum seekers is not very extensive. Nevertheless, there is a tendency for asylum seekers to go to a dental practice less often than the general population in Germany. Studies from other countries have also shown that refugees have more difficult access to dental care, says lead author Kayvan Bozorgmehr in a press release from Bielefeld University.
This is all the more remarkable as both international and German studies have shown that the oral health of refugees is rather poor. This is not surprising given the hardships of fleeing, the stressful living conditions and the sometimes lower level of education of those affected.
Nothing in the findings now presented suggests that asylum seekers in this country are gifted with sparkling teeth. On the contrary: the authors assume that refugees are not adequately cared for.
While German citizens have access to regular preventive medical examinations, according to the law, asylum seekers generally only receive dental treatment if there are medical reasons that cannot be postponed. This means that people only receive help when their problems are already advanced and possible consequential damage has already occurred.
This is not only stressful for those affected, but possibly also for the local health system. The authors argue that late treatments could ultimately result in high costs. They point to a study according to which the treatment of advanced and painful tooth decay is twice as expensive as treatment in the early stages.
The authors do not explicitly mention Friedrich Merz’s statements, but conclude their work with the comment that better data is needed on the care of refugees – also in order to “rationally address fact-free discussions on migration and health”.
The Bielefeld conflict researcher Andreas Zick, whom the university also lets speak in its press release, is clearer. “When politicians assume that refugees are abusing social benefits without any factual basis, an actual or subjectively perceived lack of knowledge among citizens is exploited. This increases insecurities through pseudo-security and perhaps only serves to gain electoral votes.”