New Public Health Approach to Oral Health Care Accessibility in a Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction
 Poor access to oral healthcare has continually been a major setback to achieving universal oral healthcare. And this is more important in low-to-medium-income communities where a significant portion of the populations cannot afford oral treatments. This situation has contributed to the increased prevalence of oral health diseases. Historically, pandemics have been known to cause a further reduction in access to healthcare with the resultant effects of a burgeoning burden of oral diseases. This review article aims at describing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on access to population-based dental care and to suggest a new approach to mitigating the effects of lockdown, which practically hinders populations’ access to care during pandemics. These are with a view to improving pandemic preparedness and enhancing population access to oral healthcare in times of restrictions. 
 Areas covered
 This is a review article that focused on COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacted access to oral healthcare. The article also highlighted the new approaches that could be adopted to consistently make oral healthcare obtainable by all despite physical restrictions. Literature searches of key terms were carried out using PubMed and Google Scholar.
 Expert opinion
 So much has been known about the impact of reduced access to oral healthcare. However, ideas on service modification and/or adoption of new methods of improving population-based access to oral care, especially during periods of global health crises have not been proposed.
  Keywords: Access to oral health, Community dentistry, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Dental public health practice, Oral health, Oral health promotion, Population oral health, Universal oral health care