Supply woes continue to top grievance list

Middle Eastern dentists continue to face long delays and inadequate service when purchasing basic equipment MED has learned.

Supplier failures, first highlighted in March, continue to plague regional practitioners.

"I am forever forced to find several different sources for even the most common equipment," said Wassim Slim of the British Dental Clinic. "Suppliers don't always have stock and shipments into the United Arab Emirates are unreliable."

Jaco Smith, proprietor of the Jumeirah-based Dental Studio agreed. "You place an order, you wait months for it to arrive and then it is not the item that you ordered.

"It is not just the supply, but the service is pretty bad too. I have had a slight problem with a new dental chair, imported from Germany, and it has taken the supplier three months to come and look at it."

The problems aren't restricted to the UAE. Dr Majd Habbab, a clinic owner in Doha, believes that Qatar's small dental industry is less attractive to large suppliers. Consequently, practices like hers struggle to source new equipment.

"It's simple things, such as restorative cements and resins," she said. "I have products I like to use that are high-end, good quality products. However, becuase they are not always available, I am sometimes forced to buy products that are not as high in quality as I would like."

Smith believes the one-agent monopoly system favoured by Middle Eastern countries is partly to blame for poor service.

"There should be more competition for the same products and they should be more readily available in big wholesalers where you can buy everything you need in one place," he said.

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