The dental health of seven year old children in Malta`s state-run primary schools

Abstract

The opportunity was taken of utilizing sessions normally devoted to school inspection and personalised dental health education to investigate the dental needs of seven year old children in Maltese towns and villages with school populations in excess of 700. Emphasis was laid on the age of seven years because it is at this age that the accumulated backlog of neglect of dental caries in the deciduous dentition makes its heaviest demands on curative services. The objectives of this survey were aimed at providing data on the specific requirements for preventive and curative services in different localities in Malta, to obtain objective data which can be used in evaluating the effectiveness of existing dental programmes in eliminating the hazards to dental and general health, to provide guidelines for national action to develop child dental health services, to serve as a pilot study for the continuous collection of information needed by governments to evaluate child dental health services.