Young boy in tears as testing starts after chipped tooth repaired by contaminated equipment

Pukekohe East Primary schoolboy Dayton Sherwin is one of 2,500 children affected by a health contamination scare at a south Auckland dental clinic. Photo / Supplied

Little Dayton Sherwin is your typical rough and tumble 6-year-old who ends up with the odd bruise and scrape when he goes outside to play.

So when his mum Jordan cleaned his teeth last November she wasn't too surprised to discover he had somehow chipped a back tooth.

She immediately made an appointment at the Pukekohe school dental service, and a filling was put over the damaged tooth.

Today his mum is ruing that decision after a sleepless night wondering if her little boy has contracted a blood-borne disease through contaminated dental equipment.

"I had to tell him this morning that we needed to go to the doctors first thing. It's hard to explain it to a 6-year-old so I said he might get sick and he needed a blood test.

"He was crying as soon as he heard he had to have a blood test done."

The worried mum wasted no time this morning trying to get her youngster tested.

"I tried to rush into the local A and E to get the blood tests done but was diverted to one of the two clinics that had been set up to handle it."

Jordan said she would be taking Dayton out of his Year Two class at lunchtime and heading to the emergency clinic in the dental rooms at the nearby intermediate school.

She said the whole episode was incredibly upsetting for her family with the prospect of at least another couple of sleepless nights before they found out whether her boy was out of danger.