Dental News - WHO dental officers to discuss oral health targets in Copenhagen

Dental Tribune International

Wed. 31. August 2016

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark: On 13 and 14 October, chief dental officers of the World Health Organization (WHO) will meet at the organisation’s Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen to discuss oral health priorities and targets in the context of WHO’s health policy framework Health 2020. The meeting represents an extension of work begun at a WHO Europe meeting in Minsk in Belarus in 2015 and will focus on oral health care systems in the countries of eastern Europe and central Asia.

According to WHO, the countries in these regions have a high oral disease burden, including high prevalence of untreated tooth decay in children and alarming levels of periodontal disease among adults and the elderly. Figures indicate that the incidence of oral cancers and loss of natural dentition is high in these countries, mainly owing to high consumption of tobacco and alcohol. For example, complete loss of the natural dentition is reported among 28.1 per cent of people aged 65–74 in the Russian Federation and 27.1 per cent in Kazakhstan, whereas the rate is 13.1 per cent in Sweden, according to WHO.

In order to address these issues and to continue pursuing WHO’s targets for reducing dental caries in children by 2020, the meeting will assess the oral health care systems of these countries and determine whether they meet the needs of their respective populations.

In the last two decades, oral health care systems in the region have undergone extensive transformation, from mainly public care providers to a mixture of public and private provision of oral health care. However, dental treatment seldom includes preventative care or oral health promotion, and generally, the introduction of universal primary oral health care is a great challenge, WHO stressed in a press release.

In this context, the Copenhagen meeting will furthermore include discussions about strengthening work towards integrated population-based disease prevention and national public health, especially for vulnerable populations such as children and elderly people.

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