Oral health for healthy longevity in an ageing society: maintaining momentum and moving forward

Abstract

The ageing of populations worldwide is rapidly accelerating. However, the global burden of oral disease remains a critical and often underestimated problem. As ageing progresses globally, oral health maintenance becomes a matter not only of public health, but also of human rights. Therefore, in low- and middle-income countries, policymakers are seeking to realize universal health coverage even as they struggle with severe resource limitations. To achieve and maintain global oral health, we propose an ongoing global monitoring cycle consisting of the following four steps: needs assessment, implementation of appropriate health care systems and provisions, reducing the global burden of oral disease, and working to achieve a healthy ageing society. Rather than a unidirectional information flow from high income to low- and middle-income countries, the proposed system would establish a multidirectional information-sharing cycle that would benefit all countries. To make this possible, however, we must develop a standardized set of core oral health indicators that all countries use, as well as a global repository for gathering, compiling, and sharing the data. This system would allow each country to move forward at its own pace and in locally-appropriate ways, making it more effective and efficient in the long run than the current pattern of setting unrealistic goals that all countries are expected to achieve by a certain point in time.