Today is the Oral Health Day and apropos this day, dentists in Serbia warn about the worrying trend of lack of proper oral hygiene in the country’s population.
They say that 700,000 people in Serbia have no teeth whatsoever and that only a half of the population in the country brushes teeth every day.
The data collated by the Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut Institute of Public Health show that only 8.5% of the adult population has all the teeth and that the problem is not age-related. Even very young people are losing their teeth due to poor oral hygiene and failure to do regular dental checkups.
Dentist Jovan Cabunac says that this problem has been going on for quite some time and that there is insufficiently developed awareness in Serbia about the importance of having healthy teeth.
He adds that bad teeth are not only an aesthetic problem but that the infection from the mouth enters the bloodstream and spreads throughout the body – to the heart, kidneys and eyes – and can create a myriad of other problems.
“Bad habits are the cause of oral problems – excessive intake of sugar, consumption of alcohol, cigarette smoking. All of this affects teeth and causes decay”, he underlined and added that, in the Asian countries, for instance, mouth cancer is the third most common type of cancer.
The Institute’s study conducted among school children showed that the almost 2/3 of pupils have the habit of daily brushing, i.e. more than once a day, and that girls brush teeth significantly more than boys.
Boys of the seventh grade of elementary school are the worst when it comes to brushing teeth on the daily basis (only 55.8% of them does that), and while the students of the first grade of high school have the best oral hygiene habits (85.2% of them brushes teeth regularly).
Dr Cabunac points out that better prevention is needed in order to prevent serious problems.
“We need to teach our children to start going to the dentist at an early age and pretend that going for a dental appointment is a form of a game, so that they can later build trust in dentists and not protest against coming. They should never be scared of dentists”, Dr Cabunac adds.
Fear of a dentist and pain is unjustified because there is always an option of anaesthesia which can be administered without a needle, in the form of anaesthetic sprays.
(Vesti Online, 20.03.2019)
https://vesti-online.com/Vesti/Drustvo/730889/U-Srbiji-700-000-ljudi-nema-nijedan-zub-u-vilici
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