The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

LAST Thursday, the Bahamas joined more than 50 countries on World Health Day (WOHD) to celebrate the benefits of a healthy mouth.

As members of the FDI World Dental Federation, the Bahamas Dental Association (BDA) did its best to promote awareness of practicing good oral hygiene, not only locally, but worldwide as well.

According to worldhealthday.org, WOHD is celebrated every year on March 20. It offers the dental and oral health community a platform to take action and help reduce the global disease burden.

This year’s theme focused was “Celebrating Healthy Smiles”.

In an interview with Tribune Health, Dr Emmanuel Francis, of AAA Dental and the vice-president elect of BDA, said they were pleased to join with associations around the world to see what is happening with oral health; discussing problems, setting policies, guidelines and so on.

“WOHD began in 2009 and it was designed to sensitise people worldwide to the importance of protecting the oral cavity and to let them know that we have our initiative, which is ‘prevention, detection and treatment’. We want to make the Bahamian public aware of the importance of the dentition and caring for the oral cavity,” said Dr Francis.

Dr Francis said he believes a problem that Bahamians are usually faced with as it relates to dental health is the regular brushing of teeth.

“Some people think that if they get some mouth wash to just freshen their breath, it is OK. A lot of them are not really knowledgeable about dental disease and it is an indictment against us, because we as an association, we need to have a more aggressive oral health education campaign or programme,” he said.

Dr Francis said dental patients are not aware of the issues and they do not realise that dental diseases are infectious diseases. Things like bacteria are involved in dental diseases, he said.

“Dental diseases are 100 per cent preventable. I even wrote a book that is called ‘Care of Your Baby’s Teeth’. It is a parental and care-givers’ guide to cavity free dentition in children. So it is possible to raise your children free from dental cavity.

“Dental health education is the biggest deterrent to our progress. We know for a fact that it has been demonstrated that a significant number of medical diseases have their origin in the mouth and are related to bacteria which spread from the mouth to the blood stream,” said Dr Francis.

While there are children that fear dental visits, it is also common in this day and age that adults avoid regular dental visits for the same reason. Dr Francis said this may be due to the fact that persons may have had a bad experience in the past or they heard bad dental stories.

“I had a bad experience, but that motivated me to become a dentist. There are a lot of myths that people live by and they do not have the facts. So again, it is on us as an association to sensitise the public and let them know that there are things that are available to them,” said Dr Francis.

He said mothers are the primary care-givers and these are the persons that have to be reached and targeted.

“I was trying to get the Ministry of Health to buy into my book and do promotion exercises with it, particularly in the maternity wards and clinics, to let them know that teeth start to form in the womb. It is important that the mother who is carrying that child is educated on this,” he said.

Social media, Dr Francis said, is also a good way to promote awareness and get the message out there, that is why a Facebook page was started for the association.

“When we had our 50th conference in 2012 we discussed having a cell phone texting blitz in regards to dental health. I think we need more corporate sponsors on board that can help us. If we can get them on board, it can help us in moving forward,” he said.

Dr Francis said the BDA have for some time now been visiting schools and conducting seminars, mostly on the primary school levels. Also as part of the effort to promote awareness, Dr Francis said last summer the BDA assisted the Urban Renewal programme with their back-to-school giveaways, where they were able to complete oral screenings and give away dental products.

“We used our corporate sponsors, such as Lowe’s Wholesale, that gave us dental products like Listerine. Thompson’s Trading gave us dental kits that we can give out primarily to children. Our main objective is to create an awareness for oral health. We did an essay competition in the schools for sixth graders. The topic was, ‘What a Healthy Smile Means to Me’. The winner of that competition was Daniel Pintard, a student from St John’s College. He was awarded with a laptop and a gift bag filled with dental products from Lowe’s Wholesale,” he said.