400. Inauguration of new government

Takes office today the second constitutional government of José Sócrates. The Minister Ana Jorge returns again to be sworn in office as Minister of Health.

The Oral Health welcomes the appointment of Ana Jorge to the position of Minister for Health and hopes that the new ministerial team to recognize the oral health of its population as a drama of urgent public health dealt with urgently.

Together with several industry associations and taking into account the pressing needs of the population in terms of oral health, we expect a greater openness to the dialogue in the search for consensus among all stakeholders, based on a new philosophy that is firstly to ensure access for all the Portuguese population to oral health care, banning discrimination definitely existing, giving a guarantee of perfect equality in access to oral health care.

Much remains to be done, starting necessarily for evaluating and reformulating existing oral health programs, which were unduly targeted excessively in terms of target audience, usually very limited in the treatments carried out and are essentially directed to the private sector. Recovery teams of school health is an aspect of great relevance, because it is within the schools that we should start a real battle for primary health care in terms of oral health.

In a developed country, is vital to ensure equity between public and private sectors, the state must invest in the area of oral health in such a way as to ensure an equal competition with the private sector of oral medicine, competing only for the citizens a choice between supply of Service National Health (S.N.S. in portuguese) and private. Is urgent to provide all health centers in the country with the prevalence of oral health, as they may initially entail higher financial costs but will have immediate positive impact on the health of its population, and a subsequent huge financial return for the state of the medium term.

Priority measure is the creation of Oral Health Newsletter for the entire population, including making it compulsory element immediately to children and young people in primary education and secondary education, as incredible as it seems no one understands that the most backward countries that our are already far more advanced in the area of child and adolescent oral health.