The Rarotonga Health Clinic’s long-time plan to extend its services to dental care is about to become a reality, offering the community more healthcare options.

The clinic will officially open its dental clinic this Friday. The new dental clinic will provide dental services such as crowns, bridges and dentures.

Expensive treatments like orthodontics will also be made available at the clinic.

Patients requiring this treatment usually get referred overseas, according to one of the co-owners of the clinic, Dr Nini Wynn.

Speaking to Cook Islands News, Dr Wynn said it is a milestone for the clinic to finally expand its services to include dental care, giving the community more options especially in orthodontic treatments.

She added that this initiative started in 2020 but was impossible to pull through due to constraints posed by the Covid-19 pandemic at the time.

“It’s not a different clinic but extension of our clinic in the same building which we’ve been planning since earlier this year but we have been wanting to open since 2020. But after we opened, Covid happened and it (dental clinic) didn’t happen so we thought now is the time to open it,” Dr Wynn said.

“We thought to open earlier this year but ordering things and getting things rolling requires time.

“We’ve been providing general care practice for the community since 2020, this is just an extension of our service. We can see that there is a need from the community so we want to provide more options for the community.”

In addition to the new equipment for the dental clinic, they also recruited new staff team including a full-time dentist and a part-time dentist, both from Fiji, and a dental assistant.

The general health care side of the clinic employs two doctors and one nurse.

Dr Wynn also stressed that the new dental clinic aims to limit financial struggles for patients, especially for orthodontic treatments.

“We can provide orthodontic treatments. For the dentures, crowns and bridges, we will make it here, we got the equipment here so we don’t have to send them to New Zealand or wherever,” she said.

“It will be done fast within a day depending on how much that needs to be done.”

The public is urged to make use of the new dental health services available at the private clinic starting this Friday.