| Abstract
Caries is one of the most common chronic diseases worldwide, from which
children suffer from. Already in 1981 the WHO published goals in their "six
oral health goals": this concept demands that the DMFT-rate of twelve year
old children should shrink below 3 and that the amount of caries-free children
should rise up to more than 50 per cent. The publishing of the concept was
issued, since caries not only represents a health issue but also an economic
one.
After those goals were reached by Austria, like most of the other western
industrial countries, the WHO republished a new model, containing new goals,
that have to be achieved until 2020.
Despite the positive evolution, thanks to the WHO goals, caries-polarisation
within population-groups is growing: a big amount of caries-free children is
facing a small percentage of children with high DMFT-levels. This has to
change until 2020 and is one of the new WHO goals. More precisely, this
small percentage group has to reach a DMFT-rate of less than 3. In this way,
the WHO hopes to reduce the caries rate in the population.
To be able to match the new goals, prophylactic measures have to be
established, also containing the education of the parents, which plays an
important part in the process.
A high flux of immigrants coming to central Europe since the second half of
the XXth century is influencing the statistics mentioned before, because the
percentage of children with high caries-rates are very much represented in the
second and third generation of the migrants. |
