Dental treatment is widely available in Gozo and the cost is a fraction of the fees you would pay in North America. Keep reading for specifics.

Dental treatment is available in Gozo from both public and private facilities. The Gozo General Hospital has a dental clinic that offers scaling and polishing, extractions, temporary fillings, emergency treatment, and full dental care for school-aged children. Of course, permanent residents may obtain this treatment free of charge. Fees, which are very low, are charged to temporary non-EU citizen residents. Our son was referred to the public clinic from school for an examination and scaling/polishing and we were charged only Lm3. The clinic is not at all fancy and has older equipment and waiting times for appointments are of course longer than at private clinics. Dental emergency cases are treated either at the dental clinic during opening hours or at the emergency department when the clinic is closed.

The public clinic is busy providing treatment to patients who cannot afford to go elsewhere so we felt that the right thing to do would be to find a private dentist. When it was time for the rest of the family to have check-ups and cleanings I phoned around to get an impression of what the fees were like at private clinics. First I contacted a very ritzy private clinic with a big Yellow Pages ad (I wanted to find out what the top-end prices were). They quoted us Lm5 for the dental exam (excluding x-rays) and another Lm12.50 for the scaling/polishing. That gave me an idea of the high end of the range and so I then contacted a small clinic. Amazingly, we were given a price of Lm6 for a combination exam and cleaning.

Appointments for the five of us were available within the week and I booked. The dentists are very nice and the treatment room was clean, shiny, bright and modern. The care was indistinguishable from that which we had received at our very expensive Canadian dentist's office. We paid Lm6 per person (no cavities!).

I inquired about fees for a couple of other things. My son will need some orthodontic work to straighten his upper teeth. We were given two options. The first, a series of two removable braces at a total of Lm200 including all office visits. Alternately if we would prefer fixed braces he will be referred to an orthodontist and the dentist said that she expected the overall cost would be Lm400 to Lm500. We've heard horror stories about the cost of orthodontic work in North America so we're really happy to have such affordable pricing here.

The other quote I got was for tooth bleaching (I've been toying with the idea of having mine whitened for a while). The whole process of taking the impressions, having the trays made, and buying the bleaching gel will run Lm55, about half the price I was quoted back in Canada.

Both the more expensive dental clinic and the very nice one we chose offer a full range of cosmetic and restorative dentistry services including crowns, veneers, bridges, etc. The fancy clinic also advertises collagen injection treatments for facial wrinkles!

Edit: December 2007- Our son's orthodontic work went ahead as planned and he is almost at the retention phase.  We are very pleased with the results and feel that we received excellent value.

No before and after pictures, he's shy :)