MEMBERS of Nigeria Dental Association have tasked Nigeria government to implement the proposed national oral healthcare policy. They said the policy was launched in November 2012 with the purpose to help the association to have all they supposed to have as oral healthcare professionals in Nigeria. They argued that the policy should be broad and wide in order for the grassroots dwellers to benefit from oral healthcare services in the country.

      They stressed, “the policy would help in the Universities education, where dentists are been trained. It will go a long way to boost academic performance of the students, who are future dentists.” 

     They said this during Nigeria Dental Association’s (NDA)  biennial general meeting and scientific conference titled “Nigeria at 100 years, the dentistry perspective” held in Idi Araba, Lagos, and sponsored by Oral-B Toothpaste, which is marketed in Nigeria by Procter and Gamble.

      Towards the efforts to reduce oral disease in the country, Procter and Gamble makers of Oral-B Toothpaste launched their new premium gum protection product, at the conference. The new product was approved by Nigerian dentists.   

     President of NDA, Dr. Olurotimi Olojede, said the policy would help Nigerians  to have best of oral healthcare services in the country. 

   Olojede said: “The reason why we are here is to strategize on how organs of governments and our association to come together at every point to be able to carry out this policy to the benefit of Nigeria population.  

 “What we are asking for the policy to be broad and wide. The policy should not be a paper white document but it should carry out to benefit all Nigerians. We are asking for total healthcare coverage in Nigeria and we have been in series of meeting with government”.    

   He continued: “The way forward is that the policy should not be only a paper work, it should come to the field and make sure grassroots benefit maximally. One of the key things that would help is to call the community dentists together and ask them to faction out a package that would serve as primary oral healthcare. So that dental practitioners would be primary provider of oral healthcare services in Nigeria.  Presently we are secondary oral healthcare providers and that is why of the bottlenecks in patients presented to dental surgeons. Primary oral healthcare providers would help us to tackle all oral diseases. We can even prevent the diseases as early as possible. The agitation is that there should be dental surgeons of oral primary healthcare providers and not secondary providers as it is now”, he said. 

   The Dean, faculty of Dentist, Bayero University, Kano, Dr. Adetokunbo Adebola, pleaded with Nigeria government that policy should not be a document that is only in the shelf. But something that can produce the expected, outcome of what the document supposed to be. 

 Adebola said. “We need to see how this can be done through the platform of the academic faculties of dentists in Nigeria. The profession really needs road map and strategy of implantation, so that government can now actualize the strategy. We need to bring out strategy that will be implementable. We have already started doing it in Kano, as the document is written, the dental schools have the best platform to actualize it.

   Adebola informed that manpower is the major problem affecting the Association. “Right now the manpower we have in oral healthcare is not appropriate for what the policy is advocating. We need to re-strategize to start thinking in a right way to produce the right caliber of manpower. To do the right job, so that oral healthcare policy can be implemented. Right now more than 30 percent of our members are unemployed. Some of them are trained but they are not employed and their service is greatly needed. We want them conformed to the need of this oral healthcare policy. And to make them employable and add value to what we are doing”.

Adebola disclosed tha there is need for the association to have oral healthcare programmes on ground at the grassroots, to provide primary oral healthcare. “We need to do what would key into the national healthcare policy. So we also can operate at that level of care where people at the grassroots will be dully referred”.                   

   He continued: “Template has been given to us, which we can call basic package of oral healthcare, which we need to actualize.  We are dreaming of green Nigeria and how they can access oral healthcare.  Right now oral health is conveyed to the clinics, we want to take it to the community level”, he said.

   President, elect of the association, Dr. Olabode Ijaraogbe, said the confrence was to evaluate how far the association has gone in 100 years, of practicing dental in Nigeria.    

   Ijaraogbe said: “We have to take stock, if you dream bigger in future you must evaluate where you are coming from and where you are at present. We want support the vision 20:2020, to know what we have achieved in past 100 years”.

   Ijaraogbe said, the policy would move the association forward. “We need dissemination of information down to the grassroots average for Nigerians and at the same time to provide qualitative treatment to every Nigerian”. 

    “Formulation of oral healthcare policy contains guidelines that can allow us to achieve the adequate and effective oral healthcare for average Nigerians. It is a blue print that if we follow it, is going to go a long way in making sure that people receive oral healthcare.

      He continued: “We need to up date our knowledge in order to coup with the advance in knowledge. So that we can be able to handle the disease that would come across when our patients confront us. We are looking at primary prevention, convincing people to imbibe the virtue of brushing their mouths twice, after morning meal and at night before going to bed. People need to know how to brush their mouth properly because there are techniques in brushing. 

      We believe also they should visit their dentists twice in a year, which means once every six months. Knowing the right time to eat, we believe that some of the oral problems can be avoided. 

  If they visit their dentists those problems can be identified and treated. The mouth is the gateway to the body, anything that would go into your body must pass through mouth. If the mouth is not health the whole body is not healthy. Affected persons would not even take good nutrition, even to take drug it would pass through mouth.