The new teaching clinic will be combined with the city’s existing public dental clinic and the school dental service, which will be transferred from their Vermont Street location to be co-located in High Street.

The combined services will be sited in a large basement area in the High Street building now shared by Upper Hume Community Health Service and Personnel Services.

Wodonga’s public dental services, which comprise two dentists working in Vermont Street and a further two chairs operated by dental therapists working with the school dental service, will be boosted by the 10 chairs which will provide for the new teaching clinic.

The funding for the 10 chairs was confirmed this week by the Victorian budget and the clinic is expected to be operational before 2010 when the first dentistry students begin their practical placements.

Professor Peter Wilson is the head of the La Trobe Dental School, based in Bendigo, which welcomed its first 50 dentistry students earlier this year.

The school will also graduate its first students from the therapy hygiene program later this year.

Professor Wilson said some of the therapy hygiene students would arrive in Wodonga next year on professional placements, while the first dentistry students would begin their placements in the third year of their degree.

He said they would circulate around clinics at Bendigo, Mildura, Melton and Wodonga.

Professor Wilson visited Wodonga yesterday with senior lecturer with the School of Dentistry and Oral Health, Ben Keith, to meet with La Trobe’s director of health sciences at Albury-Wodonga, Dr Guinever Threlkeld; chief executive of Wodonga Regional Health Service, Ray Sweeney and chief executive with Upper Hume Community Health Services, Leonard Peady.

“The university is providing a facility which it is hoping will have a long-lasting effect for the community,” Professor Wilson said.

“We will have students in the clinics for 48 weeks a year.”

l Editorial — page 20