Manila, Philippines, 6 December 2017
Oral diseases are among the most common diseases worldwide, particularly for school-age children and adolescents. They pose significant public health challenges for all countries and entail substantial health, social, and economic impacts. Simple and effective interventions exist to prevent most oral diseases. The school setting, among others, plays an important role. The Fit for School Programme has integrated the daily practice of group toothbrushing with fluoride toothpaste and was featured as a best practice example of integrated school health interventions in the third edition of the Disease Control Priorities (DCP3).
Dr Bella Monse, Senior Advisor of the Regional Fit for School Programme and co-author of the chapter points out that “group toothbrushing with fluoride toothpaste, similar to other health and hygiene interventions in the school setting, has great potential to reduce preventable disease. It is a cost-effective intervention that can reach a large number of students from all backgrounds and promotes healthy behaviours.”
“This volume encourages policymakers to use DCP3’s analyses to invest in interventions that have demonstrated impact across the life course, not just in the first 1000 days but throughout the first two decades of life,” says Dr Nilanthi de Silva, volume editor and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. “Our essential packages contain cost-effective and cost-beneficial interventions that address the needs of these age groups.” Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcomes the attention given to health promotion and disease prevention.
Previous editions of the DCP were published in 1993 and 2006. The DCP3 aims to provide the most up to date evidence on intervention efficacy and programme effectiveness for the leading causes of global disease burden. It is coordinated and managed by the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, published by the World Bank and funded through the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation. Starting in 2009, the DCP3 has been a large undertaking comprising 172 chapters across 9 volumes developed through a collaborative effort from more than 500 authors, 230 peer reviewers and 33 editors.
Sources:
http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2017/launch-dcp3-series/en/
The chapter can be downloaded free of charge on the DCP3 website at: