435. 11th edition of the Colgate Oral Health and the Portuguese Society of Dental Medicine

Colgate and SPEMD (Portuguese Society of Stomatology and Dental Medicine) boost in March 2010, the 11th edition of "Oral Health Month SPEMD and Colgate. "For a month, doctors and dentists dentists will conduct free dental screenings (without X-rays or treatment) to the population throughout the country, including Madeira and the Azores, with the aim of preventing the diseases of the mouth and enhance the teaching of oral hygiene among Portuguese population.

One of the messages in that professional oral hygiene is going to insist on brushing teeth. This task should be performed after each meal and before bedtime, to reduce the risk of tooth decay, gum disease and bad breath caused by bacteria lodged in the mouth and feeding of food scraps that fall between the teeth.

Not to contaminate the mouth, brushing should be done always with a clean brush and, preferably, adapted to the needs of each. Still, it is advisable to exchange brush every three months and whenever the user through a period of illness.

Oral Hygiene professionals will also be discussing the importance of the elixir and flossing. A truly effective cleaning of the mouth does not release these two objects, ideal to combat plaque, 80% of which is distributed by the tongue, palate and cheeks. Only the remainder is what is lodged between the teeth.

Irrespective of the use daily brushing, flossing and elixir, all professionals Oral Hygiene advocate regular visits to the dentist. The professional assessment of the state of dental health remains the best method of preventing oral diseases such as gingivitis and tooth decay, which does not even generate pain in its early stages.

Thanks to the last of the Colgate Oral Health and SPEMD, launched in 2000, have been performed over 100 000 free dental examinations and prevented untold potential cases of oral diseases.

To participate in the Month of Colgate Oral Health and SPEMD, interested parties can obtain details of your stick closer to his home through the blue line - 808 305 306 - between 12:00 and 23:00.

For any clarification, please contact: Emirec Comunicação - Cristina Brito; Telf: 21 301 13 90 Email: cristina.brito@emirec.pt Sociedade Portuguesa de Estomatologia e Medicina Dentária

434. Oral health makes contracts with private: More spending on health was worse

The implementation of oral health programs using the contracting of private policy followed by the last government, has dragged down the oral health of the Portuguese.

In the case of oral health program for children and adolescents, it was not enough to convey to the public idea of a new program, in practice when it comes to replacing one program by another program, now we all know that the new program adds to further discrimination among children and young people with privileged access to that program and the other children and young people who will definitely stay away from any kind of support.

Extremely aberrant is the fact that children and adolescents may only access the program at certain ages: for the government, dental caries and other oral health problems appear in pre-defined ages.

And no one speaks of embezzled thousands of euros to promote media campaigns, as part of the media is already supported by our taxes.

Increasingly seen to indemnify the state by the oral health of the Portuguese, already almost definitely delivered to private interests who seek profit in the first place. We try to squander the last remaining resources in the National Health Service (SNS), many now see as many people as attractive source of profit and less about preventing the greater market share in the future.

One thing all agree are also: implement a bulletin Oral Health for all children and adolescents in Portugal is one thing that you can not hear because it can only be done in less developed countries as Portugal, where parents do not have sufficient income to afford the oral health of children.

The sad thing is the black spot that organizations of dentists may be leaving, to collaborate with all this farce. Does not have any strength to the country show clearly that spending more of our taxes is the worst result in oral health?

433. The confusion of dental checks

National Health Service has issued half a million checks

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With nearly half a million of first dental checks already issued, the National Oral Health will now be extended to children in middle ages. An extension that is not good, since on the one hand, takes children who missed the validity of the check request in 2009 and, second, extending treatment to those that attended last year, they need more monitoring. Thus, apart from children of seven, ten and 13 years who are entitled to two or three valleys, this year's eight, eleven and 14 years of age who need to continue treatment started in 2009 may be referenced by the family doctor.

Moreover, the Ministry of Health decided to open the middle children of these ages the opportunity to once again have dental checks, once in the last school year, have seen their checks expired. At the time, the result of late delivery of the vouchers - which was valid until August 31 - many were left without treatment, as she admits herself Directorate General of Health (which yesterday issued a statement giving an account of the enlargement of PNSO). This year's checks the validity of August 31.

The Secretary of State for Health ensures that the objective in the long term is to ensure oral health care to all children and young people aged between four and 16 years. Manuel Pizarro does not advance, however, that a deadline for universal coverage. Is incremental, told JN. We have a ways to go compared to other countries, he admits.

For the other groups covered by PNSO, Manuel Pizarro speaks in reasonable compliance of pregnant women followed in the health centers, but the low participation of the elderly beneficiaries of the solidarity supplement. A delay that gives the poor access to information. We have to work on a dissemination strategy of the measure.

Checks are issued by family doctors in health centers, giving the user the possibility to choose the private practice who understands among dentists PNSO adherents. Recently, a controversy broke out involving the national debt to these professionals, a problem that is recognized by the Ministry of Health administrative services were not able to answer the flood of checks in the North and Center. But the commitment is to regulate the payments until the end of the month, ensures Pizarro.

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A genuine confusion at the level of dental checks:

- sometimes others are not bald;

- those studying in public schools are entitled to dental check, since those who study in private education is not entitled to dental check;

- Is for all children but do not know if it's for when I have more than 18 years;

- at any time to change the rules;

- the Court has already drawn the attention of the government because of dental checks are a way to further accentuate the disparities between haves and have no access to oral health;

- nobody takes the elderly to the offices of dentists;

- are appalling delays in payments to dentists.

Finally, a complete farce or shame in that nothing is meant to illustrate the design and that the Ministry of Health, Directorate General of Health and Assciação the Order of Dentists traced to the oral health of children, young and old Portuguese.

Just like to know how do you know the treatment needs of each person before even beginning the treatments. And then, if the budget allocated to each child, young or old is exhausted, who will bear the rest of the treatments?

432. The Ministry of Finance does not like patients

The government is preparing to pass in Parliament and referred to the Brussels Programme of the Stability and Growth 2010 - 2013 (PEC). A careful reading of the guidelines that underlie the preparation of the final PEC overlap, immediately, a general increase in taxes paid by each family, by introducing mechanisms that will make indirect taxation substantially reduce the annual repayments.

Thus, the equitable limitation for deductible expenses and tax benefits in place of taxes on individuals (IRS), taking into account the taxpayer's income level is associated with the idea of further reducing the tax benefits to families who have, For example, higher health costs.

Unfortunately, the government seems to want to come to use taxes to penalize those who most need health care, drastically worsening the equality of all portuguese in access to medical care.

Will the government already knows who will be people who will be sick? Using people's health budget to fill holes created in other sectors can only be done by low politics who has not any notion that health is not something you can choose. Unfortunately it was not enough as the dismantling of many services provided by the National Health Service; from now will be also punished those who did not choose to be sick, not to mention the already chronically ill.

Unfortunately, the health of portuguese is actually to be getting sicker.

431. The dark path from childhood in Portugal (part 2 / Conclusion)

Combining the concept of health as defined by the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social, not merely the absence of disease, with the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, we can say that Portugal is a country that is in constant violation of human rights by failing to officially recognize as a disease all the pathologies associated with oral health. In this context, our country runs over the basic rights of children and adolescents who, having no psychological maturity, are neglected by the national health service and cruelty of unpredictable consequences for the rest of their lives.

The politics of contempt made ​​by governments regarding the prevention and treatment of diseases associated with oral health is well illustrated by an absence in Portugal, no mandatory screening of all children and adolescents at the level of dentistry. Moreover, governments will closing oral health services that will still exist in hospitals and health centers, taking advantage of the absence of a specific technique for career dentists, dentists and dental hygienists from within the civil service.

The use of service contracts with private, within the oral health, lately made ​​by governments, shows total inaction by the Ministry of Health and Education in face and resolve the problem by putting public health in the hands of economic interests alone.

We are witnessing the delivery by the government, the responsibilities of oral health to entities that often manifest a clear lack of ethics and never showed interest in making primary prevention, usually associated with or colluding with business groups and multinationals that want to maintain the current landscape in order to ensure customers in the medium and long term.

The consequence of outrages against human dignity committed by the previous and current governments in the context of oral health, with the connivance of organizations directly and indirectly related to oral health, resulting in the worst abuses of the rights and dignity of the human person, in the latter case, are victimized by the system, since it can not choose to be born into a rich and powerful family, with all rights, and a family destitute and poor, who are denied all their rights, since they can not afford them.

While government associations and groups involved in oral health signing up to the current situation, we are daily violating the most elementary rights of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which prevents a very large percentage of them may never have adequate oral health treatments with unpredictable consequences for the rest of their lives.

How long will you continue this atrocious policy of oral health in Portugal? After all, where is the ethics of oral health? The sensitivity for oral health problems, particularly in childhood and adolescence, requires a completely different behavior on the part of the current government and entities connected to the practice of dentistry.

Are they also expected to occur to the suicide of a child or teenager why you were denied oral health care?

430. The dark path from childhood in Portugal (Part 1)

Last week was notorious for Portugal to become a country where there are children who commit suicide are victims of Bullyng in school.

Unfortunately, the degradation of living conditions of the working population, subject to all sorts of social humiliation, either in industrial relations or the relations of social integration has dramatically complicated because the family monitoring their children's education.

Increasingly witnessing the closure of a whole range of social supports neighborhood that marked the quiet environment of small rural and urban environments. The policy of strangulation of public services provided to more remote from major media centers, made ​​by past governments, has increasingly worsened the living conditions of the overwhelming majority of the population of these areas is increasingly unprotected access to essential supplies, including to health care.

The deregulation of labor laws throw the overwhelming majority of the working classes to work schedules completely inappropriate to the educational support of children; the closure of thousands of primary schools and the concentration of hundreds of children and young people in larger school environments severely depersonalized relationship closeness between teachers and students; extending completely atrocious school hours does not translate accurately any benefit for healthy children and young people, education for health care simply does not exist in the overwhelming majority of schools, the attendance of children and youth with educational needs has been severely curtailed by recent governments.

All this reflects negatively on the personality of children and youth, today more than ever just to learn authentic machines, even though they have no capacity to do so.

The irrational disarray of basic education in the country then, no one actually knows what the capabilities that a young person should acquire by the end of his academic training and is a symptom that illustrates the dark path taken by the current rulers.

In the area of primary health care, is truly appalling what is happening in school health in the country: the overwhelming majority of the primary school makes no medical checks over the years attending school. In the context of oral health there is no control of the situation and the overwhelming majority of children and young people are never examined and properly treated throughout their school life, with appropriate consequences for the rest of his life.

In a country where many thousands annually spend billions of euros in investment return highly doubtful, the primary care of children and young people are neglected by purely educational system.

All these dramas illustrate the role and incompetence of politicians who have ruled the country since April 25, 1974.

(Continued)

429. Smoking causes 19 out of 20 tumors of the mouth

Among people who develop cancer of the head and neck, 95% are smokers or have a history of smoking. The study of the Cancer Institute of the State of São Paulo (ICESP) also shows that men account for 90% of those affected, reports the Estadão.com.br website.

The survey was conducted with 327 patients at the institute. The data refer to tumors affecting the aerodigestive tract, ie, mouth, pharynx, larynx and trachea. According to the oncologist ICESP Gilberto Castro, 65% of the cases correspond to tumors in the oral cavity and pharynx.

Smoking is the main risk factor for cervical cancer. The consumption of alcoholic beverages, especially distilled, also increases risk. Generally, the two habits are associated, said Fernando Luiz Dias, head of the Head and Neck Surgery of National Cancer Institute of Brazil (INCA). The action is cumulative. The time that the patient smoked and the amount of cigarettes a day makes all the difference.

The expert explained that the problem is more common in men not only because they smoke more, but also because they are careless of their oral health. The presence of plaque and broken teeth that cause chronic trauma on the cheek, for example, also increase the risk. Infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), which occurs through sexual intercourse, can cause throat cancer.

Because they are in visible locations, these tumors can be detected early, even through self-examination. But according to the oncologist ICESP, over 70% of patients who seek treatment are already in advanced stage disease. If treated early, the chances of cure are good. But like most is late, 70% will die within five years. Often those who survive are left with consequences affecting the quality of life, he says.

In addition to lumps in the neck that lasts for more than two weeks, other symptoms of this type of cancer are red or white patches, mouth ulcers with bleeding and delayed healing, changes in voice or persistent hoarseness and difficulty swallowing.

POP - Portal de Oncologia

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Please continue to smoke. What my tax money can then be diverted to pay for the treatment of cancers that you have come to this, instead they can be channeled for the prevention and treatment of dental caries of children and young people. The Portuguese government to thank for their addiction.

428. How can an order to stop humiliating the Government itself?

Government pays dentists checks without a bank guarantee

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There are thousands of dentists, especially in northern and central Portugal, to whom the State has tens of thousands of euros since last year, for services rendered in connection with dental checks. The aggrieved and indignant, saying that the government checks are bald. I know colleagues beginning their careers, which are going very badly, because, having not yet customers, had the dental checks to pay fixed costs arising from the conduct of business. Only, as the state is the first to give a bad example, bad pay, not those colleagues now have to pay up, the materials used with patients sent by the Ministry of Health, assured, to JN, a physician Porto, whom the Regional Health Administration of the North owes about six thousand euro since October 2009.

The JN contacted the Ministry of Health, regional health administrations (ARS) North, Centre, Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Alentejo and Algarve and the Order of Dentists to determine the total amounts outstanding, from the creation of dental check, in June 2008. However, only the ARS Lisboa e Vale do Tejo, unless challenged, said: 178,960 euros. The ARS that are the worst paid in the North and Centre. The best are those who pay the Algarve, Alentejo and Lisbon and Tagus Valley.

There are doctors in the North, thus far, has not received any service within the dental checks. Most, however, not received since October 2009. The João Pedro Oliveira of Clinical Cértoma in Anadia, ARS Center should, since half a year ago, about ten thousand. Ana Lampreia, Supermed Clinic, ARS Alentejo is about 800 euros. But the examples are more than many. The JN heard more than fifty dentists and all complain of late payments incomprehensibly.

Ana Filipa, Braga, says he attends a clinic where, since July 2009, patients with dental check, ARS North never came to pay him any service. Maria José Cameira, Faro, criticizes the bureaucracy leading to payments and says it takes less time to meet some patients than to fill their forms. André Neto, Alfacinha Smile Clinic in Lisbon, says that what you usually have outstanding enough to pay to an employee and who had to live with the money of dental checks had already died. Rita Barroso of Coimbra, complains of not receiving since October 2009.

At JN, Filomena Lages, ARS Center, acknowledged that unpaid invoices with about four months, but attributed some blame to doctors who meet the forms incorrectly. Antonino Leite, the ARS North blames the workload.

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