Hussam Lone offers homeless people free advice and treatments in an effort to make dentistry more accessible (Picture: Hussam Lone/Churches Winter Shelter)
Hussam Lone, 32, was confused. The NHS dentist had spotted the same name over and over again on the sign-up sheet for four days straight.
The married father-of-two wanted to know why the patient showed up late for his appointment every single time.
‘It’s the fifth day, and it’s the same guy who’s kept coming late and I ask him what’s going on,’ Hussam tells Metro.co.uk.
‘He was like, “I live in north London,” which is miles away, and “I wake up every day at 6am and walk to get to you by 5pm but by the time I get here, it’s too late.
‘”After that, I need to walk back because if I don’t get back to the archway, then someone else will sleep in it and I’ll lose where I can sleep”.’
The man, like many of the people Hussam provides treatments and oral hygiene products for free in his spare time, was homeless.
Hussam has spent years swinging by any homeless shelter he can. From the Maidstone Churches Winter Shelter in Kent to shelters in Bromley, southeast London; Thornton Heath, south London; and his own local in Croydon, south London.
During a visit to the Churches Winter Shelter in Maidstone, Kent, Hussam provided both service users and staff pizza (Picture: Churches Winter Shelter)
‘I’ll go to a homeless shelter to give out a bag of toothpaste and sit there for an hour and a half, and anyone who wants to ask a question about anything they’re worried about,’ he says.
‘I’ll add them to the list and see them at one of the practises to get them out of pain or help them.’
Hussam has, sometimes from his own pocket, donated pizza, tubes of toothpaste and electric toothbrushes to those who rely on winter shelters, also called night shelters.
Over lockdown, Hussam set up an email address for those who need it to reach out anonymously for advice in an effort to make dentistry more accessible.
Hussam first started volunteering during Christmas after he graduated with his dentistry master’s, helping out his brother at a local Crisis shelter.
He saw the homelessness charity was struggling to find people for a van that offers dental treatments for free and knew it was something he wanted to do; he’s been volunteering ever since.
Hussam sometimes uses his own money to pay for oral hygiene products to donate to shelters (Picture: Churches Winter Shelter)
Hussam says spending time at homeless shelters has ‘opened his eyes’ to what it means to sleep rough or live in hostels or temporary accommodations.
One patient in London came to Hussam with a bitten tongue; he had spent years chewing tobacco.
‘My heart sank,’ Hussam says. It was oral cancer. ‘I said let’s go and get it checked. The problem homeless people have is they have no registered address, so can’t be seen anywhere.’
Hussam took him to a hospital in south London and didn’t hear from the man for months. ‘Then a woman from the shelter gave me a handwritten note from him, saying that it was cancer and he’s had half his tongue cut off,’ Hussam says.
‘And he just said thank you, because if it had started to spread he may not have made it.
‘There people who need help,’ he adds, ‘and we need to do it.’
But the winter just gone was different for Hussam, and he points to the cost-of-living crisis as to why.
Hussam first started volunteering when he saw a shelter struggling to find volunteers to provide dental treatments (Picture: Churches Winter Shelter)
‘In the last year, it used to be mainly homeless people who’d come in, but now I find those in shelters are more people who aren’t necessarily homeless but they can’t afford food,’ he says.
‘They used to be able to go to the dentists but now they can’t afford the money, so it’s lower down the list. They can’t afford toothbrushes or toothpaste.’
Hussam says that these days, the free samples he provides are ‘eaten up within minutes’, as people ask if they can take two or more for their families.
Britons are facing price hikes from all sides. Food, fuel, rent, broadband, taxes and more are rising – and fast – while inflation stubbornly stays in the double digits (the latest figure has it at an eye-watering 10.4%).
‘If you’re from a low-income background, you don’t tend to prioritise dental things as you’ve got other things to worry about,’ Hussam adds.
‘It’s a cycle. If you haven’t been to a dentist and you suddenly have pain, you’re going to be terrified of going. So that puts you off even more.’
Hussam says he’s seeing more and more people rely on his free oral health services (Picture: Hussam Lone)
One in five Brits is worried they can’t afford appointments due to the cost-of-living crisis, a 2022 report by the Association of Dental Groups (ADG) found.
That is if they can even get one. Nine in 10 dentists offices in the UK aren’t accepting new adult patients on the NHS, the BBC found last year.
In Britain, only certain people, like those on social welfare or under-18s, can get free dental. Most pay for subsidised treatments split up into different bands.
Typical treatments, like a check-up or braces tightening, set people back £25.80. But the costs more than double for treatments like fillings, oral surgery and root canal treatments, and hit the triple-digits at £306.80 for bridges and crowns.
‘That £25, most people probably wouldn’t think twice about it,’ Hussam says, ‘but the number of people I’ve seen when I say, “oh, it’s £70 for a filling”, they go, “can I come back in a few months? I need to save up”.
‘That £70 is, for an average person now, not easy to afford. Over winter, the choice was between buying their kid a present or having a filling done, or paying for their heating or having a filling done.
‘These are the types of decisions that people, unfortunately, are having to make now, which is quite frightening.’
It comes at a time when one in five Brits feel they can’t afford to see the dentist amid the cost-of-living crisis (Picture: Churches Winter Shelter)
There aren’t really any alternatives to dentist practices. If people’s teeth need a good clean or a new pair of dentures made, the dentist is the only option.
But some Brits have turned to do-it-yourself dentistry to get by, deeply alarming health experts. According to The Oral Health Foundation, a quarter of households resorted to some form of DIY dentistry during lockdown; one man necked some whisky before yanking his infected tooth out with a pair of pliers.
Oral herpes, an STD which causes blisters around the mouth and sore throats, is a also big worry for Hussam. ‘People, unfortunately, haven’t been able to afford a check-up or aren’t living in the best of conditions. It can spread quickly,’ he says.
Hussam knows, however, that he can’t shoulder or solve all the problems facing the dentistry industry and the wider health system.
One day, he’d love to be able to make a mobile app that people can use to seek out free, quick and anonymous dental advice, though he admits he’s a bit lacking in the technical know-how to do this.
But until then, Hussam is simply doing everything he can to make a difference.
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On a recent trip to a shelter run by a church, Hussam says he was handing out pizza slices when someone said it ‘tastes really nice, but I’m in a lot of pain, so I can’t actually enjoy food’.
A tooth infection, Hussam came to realise, which he had removed.
‘When I saw him next time, he was just really happy,’ Hussam says, ‘he was like, “I can enjoy my food.
‘”I can finally have a warm meal”.’
People can reach out to anonymously Hussam for dental advice at: [email protected].
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‘There people who need help,’ he adds, ‘and we need to do it.’
