Community Dental Health
- Cover Date:
- June 2016
- Print ISSN:
- 0265 539X
- Vol:
- 33
- Issue:
- 2
Editorial - Prevention of dental caries through the use of fluoride – the WHO approach
Dental caries continues to pose an important public health problem across the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that the disease affects about 60–90% of schoolchildren, the vast majority of adults and that dental caries contributes to an extensive loss of natural teeth in older people globally (Petersen, 2008a; WHO, 2016). Meanwhile, in most westernized high income countries, an improvement in dental health has taken place over the past three decades in parallel with the introduction of prevention-oriented oral health systems. A decline in the prevalence and the severity of dental caries is particularly observed in countries having established public health programmes using fluoride for dental caries prevention, coupled with changing living conditions, healthier lifestyles, and improved self-care practices.
doi:10.1922/CDH_Petersen03
- Article Price
- £15.00
- Institution Article Price
- £
- Page Start
- 66
- Page End
- 68
- Authors
- Poul Erik Petersen, Hiroshi Ogawa
Articles from this issue
- Title
- Pg. Start
- Pg. End
- Child oral health in migrant families: A cross-sectional study of caries in 1-4 year old children from migrant backgrounds residing in Melbourne, Australia
- 100
- 106
- Feasibility, utility and impact of a national dental epidemiological survey of three-year-old children in England 2013
- 116
- 120
- A bi-level intervention to improve oral hygiene of older and disabled adults in low-income housing: results of a pilot study
- 127
- 132
- Caries and costs: an evaluation of a school-based fluoride varnish programme for adolescents in a Swedish region
- 138
- 144
- Examiner reliability in fluorosis scoring: a comparison of photographic and clinical methods
- 145
- 150
- Do ‘poor areas’ get the services they deserve? The role of dental services in structural inequalities in oral health
- 164
- 167