What do the public and profession know about dental caries prevention in Korea?

Abstract

The availability of known preventive dental measures has no value, unless they are used appropriately by the public and by dental health care providers. Nevertheless, there is a wide gap between what is known about preventive procedures and dental public health measures in the preventive and public health dental world and what is known and used by the public and dental health care providers in Korea. The gap should be minimised to enable dental caries to be conquered. Firstly, an emphasis on the appropriate use of preventive procedures is needed in colleges of dentistry, dental hygienist training technical colleges and continuing educational courses. Simultaneously, there should be reform of the state run qualifying examinations for dentists and for dental hygienists in order to upgrade preventive and public health dentistry. Meanwhile, to promote personal dental health, introduce community preventive dental measures and maintain their use through self-help personal efforts and organised combined efforts, all dental health care providers have to educate the public. In addition, dental health care providers and the public should be regularly questioned on their knowledge, opinions and practices about community water fluoridation programmes, school-based fluoride mouthrinsing programmes and preventive procedures at an interval of several years, as a test to measure the achievements of dental educational and dental health education aims.