Toothbrushing with teachers a gleaming success

By BRIDGET CARTER

A toothbrushing project begun five years ago is showing outstanding early results - 100 per cent success.

Alarming dental statistics from research carried out in Northland sparked a five-year toothbrushing project that ends this year.

The project involves 1500 students at 14 of Northland's rural primary schools and 17 kohanga reo.

The oral health adviser for the Northland District Health Board, Dr Bob McKegg, has begun making his way around the region to check children's teeth for interim results.

Those of the two schools visited so far are outstanding.

During the past four weeks, Dr McKegg has checked the teeth of 57 students at Waikare Primary School, east of Kawakawa, and Omanaia School, near Rawene, and none showed any decay in their permanent teeth.

"It is wonderful," Dr McKegg said. "All the project involved was getting the teachers to get their pupils to brush their teeth every day."

The 1997 study of 300 five-year-olds from randomly selected Northland schools showed only 17 per cent of those who were Maori did not have tooth decay and that, on average, each Maori child had 4.37 decayed, extracted or filled teeth. The average figure for the non-Maori children was 1.42 teeth.

After the study's release, Maori health provider Hauora Whanui was funded to provide primary schools and kohanga reo with toothbrushes and fluoridated toothpaste for use at lunchtime.

All students at the project schools are participants.

Dr McKegg said nothing else that could have prevented tooth decay had changed in the lives of the pupils at the Waikare and Omanaia primary schools.

In the past, the bad teeth of young Maori had partly been attributed to their not brushing their teeth. But today, Maori families often could afford only cheap toothbrushes that do not properly clean teeth, and that could cause problems with decay.

Getting the right sort of toothbrushes and toothpaste was important, he said. Poor teeth could eventually contribute to a child getting rheumatic fever.

"With bacteria on their teeth, their gums redden. Hard bristles cut the gums and the bacteria can enter the bloodstream, and with circulating bacteria you get rheumatic heart disease."

Dr McKegg attributes the toothbrushing project's success to principals' backing the scheme.

"There is some magic quality in these middle-aged blokes who are principals at these outrageously underfunded and under-resourced schools," he said. "They were stunningly good."

He is collecting the other interim results, and expects the full results to be published at the end of the year.

Dr McKegg intends to ask the Northland District Health Board for funding to continue and expand the project.

The story so far

Maori health provider Hauora Whanui funds toothbrushing programme for 1500 primary school pupils in rural Northland and at 17 kohanga reo.

Toothbrushes and toothpaste are provided for lunchtime use at the schools and kohanga reo.

Schools receive check-up visits five years on. Two have been revisited so far and all their pupils' permanent teeth are free of dental decay.