NEW DELHI : When the coronavirus outbreak shuttered nearly everything except essential services last year, data on an important category of medical professionals vanished altogether: Dentists.
After most states stopped providing data on practising dentists, the Dental Council of India (DCI), recently wrote to health secretaries of states to furnish it as soon as possible.
Dental college graduates with BDS degree are eligible to register as dentists. According to the DCI, states have different rules to renew registrations, which are mostly done every five years, or in some states, every year. “The majority of states have not furnished data of registered dentists for the year 2020-21, which is ideally updated every April despite reminders