A new £17m dental school in Aberdeen has been officially opened by Scotland’s Public Health Minister Shona Robison and First Minister Alex Salmond.
The state-of-the-art Dental School at Foresterhill, Aberdeen features units for radiography, restorative dentistry and consultant orthodontics, as well as dental laboratories, practice labs for students and offices.
The Scottish government hope the new facility will help cut the long dental care waiting lists in the north east, thought to be nearly 33,000, by bringing more people into the profession.
SNP MSP for Aberdeen North Brian Adam said: "The Scottish Government and NHS Grampian are investing in North East dentistry to tackle the long waiting lists and poor oral hygiene in Aberdeen and Grampian which this Government inherited."
"This state of the art dental school will see 20 new dentists graduate every year from Aberdeen. Hopefully we can retain these dentists in Grampian and with their help make those long queues of people signing up to a dentist a thing of the past."
However, Professor Jim Newton, the school’s director, suggested that waiting lists could still grow despite the number of dentists in the area increasing.
He claimed that more people would come forward to join dentist waiting lists as soon as the new dental vacancies created by the centre were filled.
