British dental

A Briton has married a death row murderer in the US after telling her parents she was visiting DisneyWorld.

Rebecca Short, 26, had secretly become pen pals for double killer Manuel Ovante J, 35, before the couple married in prison.

The trainee dental nurse, from Oxfordshire, stunned her family when she sent them wedding photos from Eyman Prison in Florence, Arizona, out of the blue, The Mirror reports.

A friend claims she is “obsessed” with watching serial killer documentaries on Netflix.

Mexican-American Ovante, 35, imprisoned 12 years ago, was allowed to leave his cell for the April 14 ceremony.

The photos show Rebecca in a black wedding dress and boots, while her groom wears bright orange prison scrubs and white sneakers.

The bride also met Ovante’s family and they shared the wedding cake, which had black icing and red roses.

A message at the top of three tiers read, “Till death do us part.”

Rebecca also posted snaps of DisneyWorld, Florida, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco during her trip.

A friend told The Sun: “She was always obsessed with watching Netflix documentaries about serial killers in America, but no one thought she would run away and marry one.”

Rebecca’s neighbor also told the newspaper: ‘She told me about it, but I don’t really want to talk about it, it’s not my family.

It is understood the pair met on prisonlifeandbeyond.com, where Ovante wrote: “I’m easy going and tend to be a goofball.

“Very loyal to the people I love. No one is perfect, so I hope not to be judged by past mistakes.

“I like to read and listen to music. I have a daughter named Bonnie.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for in a pen pal, so I guess you’ll have to surprise me.”

Eyman prisoners spend an average of 17 years on death row before being executed by lethal injection.

On June 11, 2008, Ovante and his friends George Rojas, Nathan Duran, and Richard Fore went to Jordan Trujillo’s home to try to get methamphetamine.

However, after discovering there were none available, they left before returning in a truck to find that Damien Vickers and Gabriel Valenzuela were also at the property.

Ovante suddenly pulled out a gun and shot Trujillo twice, killing her.

He then also shot Vickers and Valenzuela.

As the former was fighting for his life, Duran helped him into the truck and they all left.

However, Ovante refused to allow Vickers to be taken to hospital and he died, his body later being dumped in an alley.

Valenzuela survived.

Ovante was arrested a month later and pleaded guilty to the murders, as well as aggravated assault.

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Sir Paul Beresford told the Mirror his practice only “technically” fails CQC checks. The Dentistry and Oral Health Parliamentary Group he chairs aims to ‘raise the profile of dentistry’

A Tory MP who chairs the parliamentary group on dentistry has seen his own dental practice fail its safety inspection.

Sir Paul Beresford, Chairman of the APPG for Dentistry and Oral Health, runs his own private dental practice, Beresford Dental Practice Ltd, in Wandsworth, south-west London.

He is listed on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website as a registered manager responsible for “treatment of disease, disorder or injury”, “surgical procedures” and “diagnostic and medical procedures”. screening”.

But after the CQC inspected his practice last November, officials ruled his practice “did not provide safe care.”

The report published in January 2022 stated: “We found that this practice did not provide safe care in accordance with current regulations.

“We found that this practice did not provide well-directed care in accordance with current regulations,” he added.

CQC officials went on to specifically criticize Sir Paul’s leadership in practice: “The supplier has failed to demonstrate that there are effective systems of leadership and management, including monitoring, evaluation and mitigation risks and the implementation of systems to monitor and improve the service.”

Feryal Clark, Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Patient Safety, said: ‘With the cost of living crisis really starting to bite and workers braced for tax hikes, it will cause yet another headache. teeth to preservatives.

“After his own dental practice failed a safety inspection, Beresford’s role as chairman of the parliamentary group on dentistry is hard to swallow.”

After the report on the dance, the CQC urged the practice to take several steps to meet regulatory requirements under “enforcement action.”

Mr Beresford said the CQC has since given his practice an impeccable bill of health. He told the Mirror his practice had only “technically” failed and insisted last Wednesday that the CQC review his practice and deem it safe.

“They are writing the report now. It will take time,” he said.

The updated report to which Sir Paul refers has not yet been published and has not been acknowledged by the CQC.

Other issues highlighted by the CQC include:

• There was no guarantee that the x-ray equipment had been tested and verified in accordance with the applicable national regulations and guidelines.
• The supplier had not registered with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and had not appointed a radiation protection adviser (RPA) or radiation protection supervisor.
• There was no Legionella risk assessment in place.
• There was no risk assessment in general medicine.

Sir Paul often cites her expertise when praising the government’s work on dental issues.

During a debate last year, he chastised Labor MP Mohamed Yasin for raising issues with emergency dentistry in the UK, saying: ‘His speech was a barrage of negativity, and that’s not is not all negativity in this area,” adding, “I’m a practicing dentist.”

Sir Paul made headlines in 2009 when it was revealed he had designated his London property, which includes his surgery, as his second home on his parliamentary allowances, claiming part of the running costs of the building from the expenses.

A substitute teacher has spent more than £1,000 on dental bills after his practice announced he was stopping NHS treatment and going private. Adam Faries said he reluctantly signed up for a private treatment plan after he was unable to find another dentist near him who offered NHS treatment.

He claimed to have tried “almost every dentist within 30 miles” of Bangor, and nearly 20 different practices told him he would be put on a waiting list for at least two years before he was seen. Through his research, he discovered there was currently only one NHS dentist in the town, which he said was “incredibly unsustainable” for a town of its size.

Adam’s case was also mentioned during a recent plenary session at the Senedd, with Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies warning that patients were increasingly facing ‘chronic expectations’ with some services ‘at risk of s ‘collapse”. For Adam, the situation is one that has left him frustrated and unsure if he will be able to afford the treatment he needs in the future. You can get more health news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.

Read more: The emergency levels at which Wales’ health boards are currently operating – and what they say is going wrong

“I checked into a dental practice in 2019, having searched for a new dentist for over a year after my previous practice in Bangor closed,” he explained. “They offered dental work to the NHS and it was going well, but I received an email in August 2020, when I was halfway through treatment, that the practice had decided to go private They said it was getting too expensive to maintain and they didn’t think they could provide the level of care they wanted with the money available.

“I have been offered a limited offer of £10 a month of private treatment,” he added. “It was a pretty good offer, it got me two consultations a year, discounts on basic treatments, same-day emergency care, things like that. But even so, I I was still unsure about that.”

Reluctant to commit to private treatment, Adam began researching alternative options. However, he was disappointed when he couldn’t find any other local practices offering NHS treatment, despite those that did had huge waiting lists.

“I looked at just about every dentist within about 30 miles of Bangor,” he said. “I phoned and emailed around 15, maybe 20 different practices in Menai Bridge, Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Llangefni, Penmaenmawr and others. This was during the pandemic so many of they weren’t taking anyone anyway, but what those who were told me was that the waiting lists would be at least two years, probably even longer.

“It was crazy, but even now, with things reopening, the waiting lists are still the same. It’s still two or three years and that’s after contacting all the dentists between here and Rhyl, and all on Anglesey too.”

Aware that the limited time supply at his current practice was running out, and with no suitable alternative, Adam apprehensively joined the private treatment plan. So far he has received work on his root canal, which he was halfway through treatment for before the practice went private, while all other items have come at full private price.

During three treatments, all of which were for fillings, he was charged over £980. Including the monthly membership fees he pays, that total approaches £1,200, which Adam says was an unsustainable amount for him to pay given the nature of his job.

“It’s a huge financial burden,” he said. “The treatment has meant I haven’t had any pain and my teeth are kept in order, but I have to pay a lot for it. I work as a substitute teacher, which is unpredictable by nature, so having large sums of money flow out of my account, before I’ve even had the treatment, it’s a bit scary, it’s money which I don’t know I have.

“For people like me, not having a suitable or available option for free NHS treatment is a huge problem because paying for what I’m doing now can’t be a long term situation. I just can’t I think I’m right in saying that in Bangor there’s only one NHS dentist at the moment That’s for a town of 10,000 when the students aren’t there and 25,000 when they’re there. It’s unsustainable. The idea of ​​the NHS is that everyone has access to free healthcare or at least cheaper healthcare, and I think everyone should have the right access to an NHS dentist It would be nice to see the Welsh government achieve this, firstly by attracting more dentists to the area to open a few more NHS practices.

During a plenary session at the Senedd on March 22, Andrew RT Davies referred to Adam’s situation to illustrate the “extremely worrying” lack of capacity within the Welsh dental services. He added that the waits had become so long that people like Adam were paying thousands to ensure their dental health, while some were going the extra mile and pulling teeth themselves in desperation.

Speaking to Prime Minister Mark Drakeford, he said: “We often talk about the consequences of parts of the NHS being closed to deal with coronavirus, which has left 20 per cent of the Welsh population on a waiting list for the NHS, and, of that 20%, one in four people wait more than a year. But none of these lists contain waiting times for dentistry. Waits have become so chronic that we see people having to pay hundreds of dollars, even thousands of dollars, or take more drastic measures in their own hands to extract the teeth.

“Now, as we see dental treatment fall by 70% in the last 12 months, do you agree with me that there is a real capacity problem within Welsh dental services and the capacity of people to register with the NHS?”

But while Mr Drakeford admitted NHS dentistry was ‘undoubtedly very difficult’ at the moment, he insisted there had been a recovery, with patient volumes almost at three-quarters of levels. ‘before Covid. He also denied that the problem was due to a capacity problem, instead saying it depended on the “circumstances in which the dental treatment is carried out”.

He added: “We still have a significant number of dentists in Wales doing NHS dental treatment, but they are simply not able to deliver the treatment volumes they were in pre-COVID conditions. , because, of all the things the NHS does , the aerosol-generating procedures that dentistry relies on are the most likely to spread COVID. Therefore, the conditions continue to be that dentists must reduce the number of patients they can see in a day, they have to have longer periods between appointments in order to carry out the necessary cleaning, which leads to the very difficult circumstances to which the Member referred.

“There is a recovery in dentistry. We are back to about 70% of the volumes that were possible before Covid. There are new ways to advise people. I think there are more than 2,000 people a week who have too much telephone advice from their dental practitioner And there are plans in particular to diversify the dental workforce, which will help to mobilize the capacities that we need in the future.

“In the meantime, the position will continue to be difficult. Although there is more money in the system, the system is not able to absorb the money that the Minister of Health has put at his disposal. disposal during this calendar year. Because money isn’t the answer here. There just isn’t the time in the day or hands on deck to be able to do all that we would like to see done.

Mr Davies told the session there were now 83 fewer dentists working on Welsh health boards than there were in 2020, adding that it was ‘probably not helped’ by the new NHS dental contract from the government, which drove dentists out of service and into private practice. The British Dental Association said the new contract reduced the emphasis on regular checkups, forced dentists to choose between old and new patients and paid dentists based on outdated performance data.

He added: “In a letter from the chairman of the local Dyfed Powys dental committee sent to the Minister of Health, the committee confirmed that not all practices in their area are able to sign the proposed contract, which would result in a 75% reduction in capacity on existing agreed levels The President said that not every member is willing to compromise on the quality of care for their patients.

“That, as a group, is extremely concerning – that NHS dental services in West Wales are at risk of collapsing as early as next month. If you accept that there are challenges on this particular issue , why are you introducing a contract that would make the situation worse and potentially create dental deserts in parts of Wales?”

Mr Drakeford said he was “puzzled” by the letter adding that from next month dentists in Wales will have a choice whether or not to take up the new contract, with no one being forced to take it. “Many, many dentists believe it is far better than the existing contract because it allows them to perform quality dentistry rather than the treadmill of dental business units that govern the existing contract and push dentists to do street checks, small procedures, rather than practicing at the peak of their professional skill,” he added.

Asked what action the Welsh Government would take to improve access to dental services across Wales, Mr Drakeford said it was planned to ‘advance the liberalization of the profession’, while 2 million additional pounds would be allocated to dentistry next year. . He added that a ‘major new dental centre’ would soon open in Bangor which would ‘provide a new level of NHS dental service to people in North West Wales’.

However, despite the Prime Minister’s promises, Adam was apprehensive about the future. “I heard the Prime Minister talk about a new dental academy,” he said. “But this is the first time I’ve heard of it. It might solve some of the problems, but it would be nice to have a little more detail on what it will bring. People who sign up there will be seen by trained professionals or by dentists in training?

“If you’re going into something as important as dental surgery, you ideally want to be seen by trained professionals, although of course students have to learn. I don’t know if that will solve anything for people like me. , but we’ll wait and see – something has to be done.”

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hit hard at a dental practice in North Shields, which has launched a fundraising campaign to support refugees fleeing the war-torn country.

Ewan Bramley Dental Care on North Shields Fish Quay is hoping to raise at least £5,000 to help his friend and colleague Serhiy Hrybovskiy, who has taken time off work to help fight for his country’s future in his home town of Lviv, in western Ukraine.

The 37-year-old, who runs the Smile Energy dental laboratory in Lviv, has already sent his wife and young sons aged six and 10 to safety in the Netherlands via Poland as Russian forces continue their brutal assault and unprovoked against Ukraine.

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He currently houses three families trying to flee the country in his apartment 70km from the Polish border, and also volunteers at a displacement center in Lviv, which has seen an influx of around 200,000 Ukrainians trying to escape increasingly violent Russian attacks in the east. from the country.

Now, following an appeal for humanitarian support from Serhiy as his country fights for the right to exist, Ewan Bramley, who runs the dental practice, and his colleague George Dandanov, who studied dentistry in Lviv and is still experiencing people in Ukraine, have launched a JustGiving appeal to help channel vital funds to their friend and colleague.

George, who is from Bulgaria and spent five years living and studying in Lviv, said he was shocked and shaken when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Speaking to Serhiy and other friends in the capital Kyiv and the Black Sea port city of Odessa, he said it had quickly become clear that deeds, not words, were needed.

“The Ukrainian people do not deserve what is happening to them. They are doing their best in a difficult situation, and I think fundraising is the least we can do for them.

“If I was still in Lviv, I would do what I can to help. Lviv is one of the safest places because it’s close to the Polish border, but it’s still not fair to say it’s safe because the air raid sirens are still sounding and it feels like it’s is only a matter of time.

“People from the east are fleeing west and heading towards Lviv and the Polish border. But it has also become a place to be for those who want to escape the fighting in the east but don’t want to leave Ukraine.

“Right now my heart is bleeding for them and for Ukraine.”

Russia’s advance in Ukraine did not go as planned. As the ground troops became bogged down and met fierce resistance from the Ukrainians, the Russian military adopted increasingly desperate and brutal tactics.

It has sparked Europe’s biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II, with the United Nations estimating that more than two million Ukrainians – mostly women, children and the elderly – have already fled the country.

These numbers are expected to rise – with the majority likely to continue to pass through Lviv.

In a message to ChronicleLive, Serhiy said Lviv was “suffocating” under the number of refugees arriving there from eastern and central Ukraine. He added that his cousin and his family in Kyiv had “spent three terrible days in a basement. Now, thank God, they are in Lviv with me, recovering from the horrors they experienced.

He added that he was “ready to defend my city, my homeland and my family” and began weapons training.

Serhiy told ChronicleLive there is a huge demand for NATO standard tactical first aid kits, tourniquets, paramedic backpacks, radios and any special means of communication.

He also compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler and said that an independent Ukraine “interferes with his imperial ambitions and his plans to create a new USSR with a totalitarian and inhumane regime”.

Ewan Bramley Dental Care has donated £1,000 to kick off its fundraising efforts and is appealing for donations from patients and the public who wish to help.

Ewan said: “I have known Serhiy for about three years and we have used his dental lab here at the practice. Some of our patients will have dental treatment performed by him at his company in Lviv.

“When the Ukrainian crisis started, like everyone else, I thought ‘fuck it.’

“We have been in regular contact with Sehiry since the Russian invasion 14 days ago, and as the situation becomes increasingly desperate for Ukrainian citizens, he has asked us to help support those fleeing to the security.

“The pedestrian queue for the border is now four people wide and 2 km long. The queue of vehicles for the Polish border is 20 km long.

“They need food, they need places to stay in Lviv, and they need medical supplies that can be sent further to Ukraine.”

You can donate to the fundraiser here

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Patients may have to go to a business park if a proposed merger of three dental practices is approved.

{my} dentist is proposing to move its practices from Middlesbrough on Cargo Fleet Lane, Marton Road and Martonside Way to a new site in Cleveland Retail Park.

This may mean that patients who frequent the Martonside Way practice will have to travel three miles to reach the new premises.

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Those who usually attend their Cargo Fleet Lane and Marton Road practices should travel just over two miles.

{my} dentist reached out to patients at all three of their practices to ask for their thoughts on the proposal.

They told them that it was not possible to improve access for more patients in the existing premises because they were “too big for their current buildings”.

The organization said the new site would offer patients a number of benefits, including extended opening hours for NHS and private patients.

They said the new premises would allow patients to access a wide range of NHS and private treatment by their team of clinicians under one roof.

Medical offices would be on the ground floor with access for wheelchairs and the disabled and there would be free parking on the retail park and bus stops located nearby.

They said existing dentists would move into the new practice, which would have state-of-the-art equipment and an improved waiting room and facilities.

A {my}dentist spokesperson said: “We contacted patients at our practices in Cargo Fleet Lane, Marton Road and Martonside Way this week to ask their views on a proposed merger with a new state-of-the-art practice. of technology.

“The proposed new practice, if approved by the NHS, will be located in Cleveland Retail Park and will offer greater accessibility, free parking, surgeries with the latest dental equipment and extended opening hours for the NHS and private treatments.

“This would represent an investment of over £1.2m by {my}dentist to improve patient access.

“We listen to our patients’ views before submitting our proposal to the NHS and will keep them informed of any changes.”

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