Several times I have said that there is a great need to include dentistry in consultations of Health Centers It also seems clear that this will be a difficult goal to achieve, but that is inevitable. So now, with the Family Health Units, whose philosophy of operation tend to increase competitiveness and supply of services, the path is just a direction and I believe not take much to consider the normal presence of the Medical Dental Health Centers.
Meanwhile we continue with the problem of having a considerable slice of the population's needs and problems at the level of their oral health. In the vast majority, who will need more people who do not have the economic conditions to resort to a private consultation. It is estimated to be about 50% of the population that is in this situation. At the other end we have come to witness improvement of oral health in the portion of the population with better economic resources. That improvement, which is reflected in the results directly to the general oral health of the Portuguese population, is related to the intervention that doctors dentists have been under preventive and therapeutic efficacy of diseases of the oral cavity.
As I said, the exercise of Dental Medicine in Portugal is very private, with few Centers of Health who have to support medical-dental. This is one of the reasons why only the socio-economic strata more advantaged may submit significant improvements in oral health. Thanks to a well targeted intervention, Raising awareness and motivate parents and children individually in the context of its consultation, the doctor dentist has developed an action much more effective than any of the public programme of prevention of diseases of the oral cavity that is being implemented by the state. That is, the improvement of oral health indices general of the Portuguese population, which have been submitted, resulting in improving the state of the oral cavity for children of families with better economic power.
Already the most disadvantaged children have been at the mercy of prevention programs State discontinuous, completely desarticulados and poorly designed. I believe that not only there is a worsening of the overall state of the oral health of these children because the use of toothpaste with fluoride gives them some protection. What I have come to defend over the years whenever there this matter, is that there is a pressing need to solve the problem of oral health of the poorest children. That can not be with a sporadic and not continuous, as is the current program of oral health education.
It requires rather a team of oral health with a sustained programme of awareness and prevention along with wide dissemination of a monitoring and involvement of medical dentistry in order to reinforce the prevention, control the disease and monitor them. If indeed the public prevention programs in oral health, which have been implemented over the last two decades, had been effective we would not have a report from the OECD, 2006 as unfavourable. Despite this report said that there was an improvement in the general state of the oral health of the Portuguese, also states that our country was the worst results showed that evolution within the countries that make up the European community.
Thus, a phase of containment of expenditure, continues to be counterproductive the expenditure of funds from the state for programs that international observers acknowledging insufficient results. It starts to be all too clear that while there in the government structures of Health a department of Oral Health, controlled by elements with competence in the area, which define strategies clear on this issue, be with the future of oral health of the Portuguese compromised.
As is the case with other areas of our country, waste resources without achieving the desired productivity. Already starting to be time of the current Minister of Health, Prof.. Correia de Campos, trying to reverse this trend and act accordingly.
MELO PAULO, dentist and professor of Dental Medicine
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