The Hungarian landlady I once knew had very nice teeth. Have you ever observed that the British, as a whole, and there's much more one could say on that score, have dreadfully rancid teeth.
Budapest is full of beautiful women who smile at one in passing. There will be good dentists there. Albania is a country where women dare not smile at one in passing. There will be less need for quality dental work in that country than in Hungary.

Capetonian

You are correct: I am making assumptions and they may indeed be incorrect. I am not a dentist but within my specialty I travel in Europe and elsewhere to professional meetings. The European medical societies I belong to consider the training of Eastern European doctors and others a paramount problem. We also struggle to try to ensure western standards apply.

The EU does not set standards for medicine in the way you believe. There is no common standard of training nor practice

The general public go to these countries at their own risk. Sadly they do not have the expertise to know what to ask or how to assess: I always use the analogy of pointing out the average airline passenger has no ability to assess the maintenance standards of an aircraft. There are common standards in aviation and we are talking of machinery not the human body so the risk in medicine far outweighs that in aviation.

I apologise for hogging this thread but I continue to witness the suffering and harm caused by ill advised health tourism. It is not a joking matter

No apology needed, you obviously know what you are talking about and your advice is sound and well meant.

Unfortunately I'm not the one who needs convincing. I have printed out this thread and will show it to my pal next time I see him.

You know about horses to water ............

http://rscrapz.com/rWeb/Sayings/0Pub/Lead_the_Horse.gif