Oral health in Tayside improves
Dental initiatives ‘paying off’
Published:
THE improvement of dental and oral health in children in Tayside was the subject of a conference held in Perth yesterday.
The meeting, hosted by NHS Tayside’s Directorate of Public Health, brought together health professionals, local authority representatives, academics and community planning managers to look at improvements in services and successes of dental initiatives in the region.
Oral health has signifi-cantly improved over the last few years due to new preventive strategies introduced both nationally and at a local level.
Research has shown that children in deprived areas are more likely to suffer from poor oral health than those from wealthier backgrounds. The new dental preventive initiatives are concentrated on all young children but have a particular emphasis on those living in areas of greatest dental need.
“Improving oral health is a priority in Tayside and today is really about bringing everyone together who has a vested interest in oral health to discuss where we are, and the future initiatives aimed at benefiting the dental health of Tayside’s young children,” said Martyn Merrett, consultant in dental public health with NHS Tayside.
“There have been some major improvements in recent years and we expect to see oral health in children continuing to improve in the future.
“We are really happy that the prevalence of dental disease is decreasing in deprived areas of Tayside and that this is being achieved through successful multi-agency working which we feel will continue to deliver future oral health improvements.
“Things are changing for the better but we can get better still.”
Nationally there has been an improvement in the proportion of primary one children with no obvious decay experience, rising from 45% to 57% and with an improvement from 47% to 57% in Tayside.
The majority of the region’s nurseries also now provide supervised tooth-brushing sessions with more than 200 schools providing the same oral health promotion.
