Oral Health Promotion has failed to prevent tooth decay our most common disease that affects over 11 million Australians each year and needs to be reviewed.
All cavities occur after many episodes of carbohydrate fuelled acid demineralisation that exceeds saliva and fluoride remineralisation where food is left on teeth in the presence of plaque bacteria that are easy to see with food colouring that is easy to brush away.
Over 80% of cavities occur deep inside pits and fissures on chewing surfaces where chewing forces the first bite of a meal or snack inside pits and fissures that brushing, saliva and fluoride toothpaste cannot access to clean, neutralise acid and remineralise tooth like on easy to reach surfaces that develop few cavities.
Political parties should all care that half their electorate experience tooth decay each year and order a review of Oral Health Promotion that improved personal tooth care advice to reduce acid demineralisation and increase saliva and fluoride remineralisation

>>Please write to your local members requesting that Government should finance better evidence based national Oral Health Promotion,<<

Supertooth, I remember as a child, an Australia where a large percentage of young adults had dentures….we were good at pulling, but not at filling.

Dental care has become the right of the affluent. We had a Commonwealth Dental Plan that catered for those with chronic conditions that are affected by poor oral hygiene….but Gillard scrapped that.

We gave more to the Indonesian Moslem school system than we did to our chronic dental assistance program. One had to go….and it wasn’t the money for Moslem schools.

Are you selling something sport?

Wasting your time here are you not?
If you can not sell health issues in health forums not likely you will here.

Oral Health Promotion has failed to prevent tooth decay our most common disease that affects over 11 million Australians each year and needs to be reviewed.
All cavities occur after many episodes of carbohydrate fuelled acid demineralisation that exceeds saliva and fluoride remineralisation where food is left on teeth in the presence of plaque bacteria.
Over 80% of cavities occur deep inside pits and fissures on chewing surfaces where chewing forces the first bite of a meal or snack inside pits and fissures that brushing, saliva and fluoride toothpaste cannot access to clean, neutralise acid and remineralise tooth like on easy to reach surfaces that develop few cavities.
Tooth decayis eay to prevent by ensuing that saliva and fluoride remineralisation exceeds acid demineralisation in a national Oral health project.

I have to say I think this is a very important topic. My own teeth, or more importantly, gums are in lousy shape, although much better than I have any right to expect after the neglect I've given them over the years. There seems to be very little that can be done to prevent endemic gum disease once it gets hold and in my case that happened when I was a child.

As sog points out, the cost of dental care is prohibitive. One of the worst-affected groups is low-income men, especially working separated fathers who have CSA obligations that are not able to be managed so as to allow prioritisation of the way their funds are allocated and no access to public dental services. An intact family might choose to reduce spending for a few weeks so Dad's teeth can be fixed, but separated fathers have that choice taken away. The best he might manage is an emergency referral for an extraction if he fronts at the local hospital with a lump the size of a cricket ball on his jaw.

A part of the problem is that it is very hard to check a dental diagnosis or the necessity of a filling once its happened, meaning it's an easy rort for unscrupulous dentists. I remember way back in my early 20s I went to get a checkup/scrape and was shocked to be told I needed 9 fillings despite no symptoms. I didn't get them done, then life intervened and I next went to the dentist nearly 10 years later to be told I had only 2 teeth that needed attention!

My parents were very strict about oral hygiene; regular tooth brushing, six month visits to the Dentist...
by the time we were twelve, both my sister and I had fillings in virtually every tooth. 5 decades later, I have hardly any of my own teeth left.
By comparison, when I had children of my own, we decided we wanted to raise our children in a rural environment, so we bought a farm. This of course meant we raised our kids in abject poverty.
We didn't stand over them to make sure they brushed their teeth, they had tank water (no chlorine, much less fluoride) and they only saw the government dentist when he came around to the school once a year.
Both girls made it to 18 without any cavities or fillings.
Today, I'm more than a little inclined to lump dentists in with chiropractors and other quacks