Good oral hygiene is the first major factor against tooth decay and oral diseases. It is achieved through children’s toothpastes that are low in fluoride, proper brushing twice a day for 3 minutes and by frequent brush changes. This was made clear during a conference related to the National Oral Disease Prevention Program for children 0-18 years in the Republic of Bulgaria, the rational nutrition of our children and working together to create lasting habits that not only improve individual health but also increase quality of life, which was held in Burgas. On the occasion of the programme, the Secretary of the Bulgarian Dental Union (BDA), Dr Borislav Milanov, commented:
“The programme is of the Council of Ministers with the Ministry of Health as the direct contractor. Each year, 10 cities are identified, which are different each year, and in which we hold round tables where we answer questions and present from the point of view of our professionalism what prevention should include. If in previous years we focused on silanization as an unpopular and new unknown modality, for the last 3-4 years we have found that no matter how much we want to, we cannot include all children, and the idea is that this information reaches all children and the results reach these children.”
Creating lasting habits in children from a very young age showed a very different result than what was found in 2010, the medic is adamant. He said that since the programme was launched in 2010, he and his colleagues have gone through all sorts of difficulties related to public mistrust, to presenting things in a distorted way, to unfair competition between specialists, because this is a programme that cannot cover 10 000 dentists, but a certain number.
“We’re getting results that are leading to extreme interest in the program itself, expressed in the fact that the parent as early as the end of the previous school year, usually the months of May-June, is looking for information on when it starts. We launch in September, which is linked to the start of the school year. Everything that we do continues to evolve”, he says.
Although there is 1 dentist for every 100 children, dental caries exists as an epidemic, reported for his part the deputy chairman of the BDA, Dr Svetoslav Gachev. In his words, nutritional prophylaxis is the most important at all for children’s health:
“Bulgarian schoolchildren are fed up with the streets. In practice, 37 Ordinance and those canteens that have them, children until the age of 10 go and have lunch there, but then they go to the street because they think that this does not suit them, but this nutritional prevention is the basis of everything.”
Every second child in our country is full and according to recent studies, Bulgarian children do not consume fruits and vegetables. He also commented on the silanization in Bulgaria.
During the conference, it was revealed that just over 70% of 5-year-old children in Bulgaria have milk tooth decay. At least 79% of 12-year-olds have caries of their permanent teeth. With 57,000 children aged 18 in Bulgaria /according to the NSI by 2021/, the number of children with caries of permanent teeth is more than 90%. If the age group is expanded, the BHS study shows that 792 000 out of 1 million children in the country have cavities.
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