An arm of Abu Dhabi’s health authority has unveiled plans to bolster paediatric dental care in the UAE capital and surrounding emirates.
The federally funded Ambulatory Health Services (AHS) has bought four mobile dental clinics to ferry a dentist, dental assistant and hygienist to remote areas in the northern emirates, as part of a new school health programme.
The initiative will also see dentists and hygienists fronting an oral hygiene programme in city schools. Any problems flagged up through the screening will result in a referral to AHS-run dental centres for further treatment.
The four mobile clinics are expected to be in service by the beginning of 2009.
AHS’s initiative comes a month after a similar scheme was proposed by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health, in a bid to improve the Kingdom’s high paediatric caries incidence.
The SEHA project is being driven by similar factors.
“Tooth decay is an epidemic in this country. Every second child has a dental problem or suffers from cavities,” said Dr Ninette Bandy, head of dental services at AHS.
“The only way to address this problem is through prevention. We want to employ a strong and aggressive programme to combat the further decline in the oral health of children in the region.”
Oral healthcare among children in cities is typically better than in the more rural “pockets” across the country, she added.
“Access is very, very difficult for people there and that is why we want to make sure that we go to them.”
The move has been widely applauded in the dental community with several dentists expressing their support for the new scheme.
“For a number of years now, these areas have been neglected, so I think it is an excellent idea,” said Codruta Corbanu, practice manager at the Advanced American Dental Centre, Abu Dhabi.
“Anything that spreads the awareness of good oral care is good thing and I think we’ll see improvements very quickly, as word-of-mouth spreads in the more remote communities.”
The AHS declined to reveal the cost of the scheme, but the mobile clinics implemented in the Saudi initiative are priced at about US$8,000 per unit.
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