Brought to you by Ewan Bramley Dental Care

With this year’s election campaign well underway and the likes of Teresa May and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn continue to clash heads in the build-up, Ewan Bramley Dental Care, a leading private dental practice, believes there are some vital areas that any Government can look at to dramatically improve children’s oral health in the UK.

Back in March, the Faculty of Dental Surgery (FDS) revealed that the level of tooth extractions amongst children under the age of four has risen sharply, up by 24% in the last ten years, and we believe there are some essential steps any incoming Government needs to take in order to halt child tooth decay.

According to the Royal College of Surgeons, in the last year, well over 9,000 tooth extractions were carried out on kids and we’re keen to stress that most of these cases, in our view, were completely and utterly avoidable.

Through the promotion of a simple and sustained oral health routine and effective education at the top, not a single child in the UK should suffer tooth decay or be forced to have teeth removed, a negative experience which can stay with them for a lifetime.

So, let’s take a look at what can be done…

Reform Education

Currently, education about oral health isn’t taught at schools in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. This is a colossal oversight in our opinion and leaves generation upon generation of young people who don’t know how poor oral health can and will impact their lives. Carers and many parents presume that this is something that is being addressed in the schools, but unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

We think that if oral health education was introduced early, we could completely reverse the outlook of the current state of the UK’s oral health.

Reform the laws on Sugar

We reached a solid and positive milestone last year when the levy on fizzy drinks was confirmed. It looked to address a key problem in the UK’s current state of oral health, or at least that’s what we thought.

Time and time again it has been completely in the shadow of other topics deemed more important, such as obesity, which of course is an issue, but so is this!

We’d urge any incoming government to take another look at the sugar levy and place it as one of its priority items and make it clear that the oral health crisis is something that needs regular funding and awareness.

Local Authorities Need More Funding!

The councils in many of our local areas have seen their funds reduced dramatically in recent times and Public Health budgets have been severely set back. There is a chronic need to increase this so that we can address the oral health problems that reside at a local level.

Ewan Bramley Dental Care takes the issue of children’s oral health very seriously. For more information about us and our services visit ewanbramley.com.