Sharp Need for Dental Care Unfilled for Many Immigrants
Va. Clinic Case Highlights Problems in Getting Affordable Help
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 19, 2007; Page B01
A sticker on the front door welcomes guests with the word "SMILE."
But that's the only resemblance between a legitimate dentist's office and the Falls Church apartment at the top of a neglected stairway where people lined up for dental work recently. Instead of a shiny linoleum floor that taps underfoot, there is cream-colored carpet dull with stains. In place of a waiting room lined with identical chairs, there is a sparse living room with furniture indifferently mismatched.
  Shawn Kumra works on Nuris Guevara, 20, at the Northern Virginia Dental Clinic, the area's largest provider of care for low-income, uninsured adults. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post) |
Yet 10 people, maybe more, flocked here March 25 to receive dental services from an unlicensed couple visiting from El Salvador, Fairfax County police said. Officers found a man receiving work in a chair. Others were waiting their turn.
Police arrested the Salvadoran couple, and within days, any sign of a clinic was gone. Many from the Hispanic and dental community say the incident underscores a larger problem in getting affordable medical and dental services to those who exist most on the margins -- adult immigrants who fear the system and lack insurance. What other choices did the 10 people waiting that day have, dentists and Hispanic activists ask.
Law enforcement officials struggle to remember another case like this. Records show the charge "performing invasive procedures without a license" has been issued only twice before in Fairfax, nine years ago. But some say rumors of clandestine clinics have existed for years.
"It was just hearsay that this was happening in some basements in some homes in the Culmore area," said Tom Wilson, executive director of the Northern Virginia Dental Clinic. "My first thought was that's a disaster that's waiting to happen."
His clinic, the area's largest provider of dental care for low-income, uninsured adults, answers about 4,500 appointments a year. Still, hundreds of names fill waiting lists.
Resources Scarce
Marina Lopez, 37, sat at the playground of the Olde Salem Village apartments on Culmore Court one warm recent evening. "Tony," she called repeatedly to her 4-year-old, who sprinted between the blue-and-yellow monkey bars to where the grass meets the parking lot.
"Many people don't have resources," Lopez said in Spanish. The children born here, such as Tony, qualify for Medicaid, the Honduran native said. "But for me? The problem is for me."
She has permission to work in the country but no insurance, she said. She last visited a dentist's office three years ago, run in a New York apartment much like the operation that was shut down just yards from where she sat. She said she paid $70 to have a tooth extracted. She doesn't know whether the dentist was licensed.
"It was necessary," Lopez said. "Many people went."
She remembered walking into the apartment, where a line had formed.
