Burden of Disease

Department of Global Oral Health
College of Dental Sciences
Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre

Department of Global
Oral Health

BPOC

Burden of Disease

Globally dental caries remains the major child oral health problem. In most countries caries in children remains largely untreated which resulted in toothache, pulp involvement, painful ulcerations in the surrounding mucosal tissues, abscesses and fistulas. These conditions impact on the general health of children. Worldwide, caries contributes 15 times more to the burden of disease expressed in disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as compared to periodontal disease. Disability means pain and discomfort and lack of self care, mobility (school absenteeism), cognition, interpersonal activities, sleep and energy.

Early childhood caries (ECC) prevalence is much higher in SE Asia and in the Western Pacific countries and in Middle and South America than in the Western developed countries while the prevalence of caries in the permanent dentition of children is generally high in middle-income countries and lower in low- and high-income countries.

There is a need to collect data on duration of toothache and school absenteeism that children of different age may experience in order to scale up a data collecting system that can be used for the calculation of DALYs. DMFT/dmft data do not stir the minds of political decision makers, but DALYs may do.

Indexes for Oral Health Care Planning
Why the PUFA index can be a more useful planning tool than the DMFT/dmft index. <more>