Preface

By the authors

The Oral Health Atlas is intended for readers interested in global health issues, and serves as a useful resource for health professionals and policy makers, and for those interested in how better to look after their own oral health. The Atlas shows that oral health has all the ingredients of a fascinating public health story: is both personal and political, encompassing total health, political will, economics, big business (sugar, tobacco and personal care), allocation of resources, poverty, children, human development and it will be crucially important in the future. 

There are several surprises for most general readers and even, we suspect, for many health professionals:

The first is that oral health problems and rudimentary treatments have been identified and described for many thousands of years.

Secondly, oral health is not limited to teeth – there are many intriguing parts of the mouth, with surprising functions, which also need to be cared for.

Oral health does not just involve the mouth but is intertwined with the health of the whole body. Thus, modern oral health care is far removed from the traditional “drill, fill and bill” concept of dentistry, but rather involves caring for the health of the complete body.

Perhaps more expected, but utterly regrettable, the Atlas maps the huge gap in oral health between rich and poor countries, high and low-income populations. The little boy on the cover exemplifies the high-risk child: from a low or middle-income country, probably without access to adequate dental care, who already has serious tooth decay: a path towards lifelong oral health problems. 

The Oral Health Atlas maps the history, documents the current situation and challenges, as well as predicts the future of oral health. There is a marketing maxim “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” and the atlas emphasises the urgent need for better data on oral health. We encourage you to read our comments on the data sources where the problems and shortcomings of current global oral health data are highlighted.

The Atlas also looks at solutions, reflects the importance of multiple approaches to improving oral health, requiring action by the World Health Organization, governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, and individuals. Integration and collaboration are the keywords here; but oral health needs both - effort on the personal behaviour and the population policy side. We hope that a future edition of the Atlas will be able to map the broad landscape of other stakeholders, such as the dental industry, dental NGOs and others.

In the last few decades we have seen developments and improvements with global impact ranging from the introduction of fluoride toothpaste in 1955 to reducing one of the major risk factors - tobacco - by the 2005 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The good news is that nearly all oral diseases are preventable and most are also treatable.  Unlike our colleagues in other fields of health, we are lucky enough to have both the knowledge and the tools to significantly improve oral health worldwide, drastically improving both the quality of life and economic productivity of nations.

The Atlas is thus a challenge, an opportunity and “call to action” to be bold and improve oral health now, so that within our lifetime, millions of people will be able to benefit from better health and human development.