At present, by the age of five, 55 per cent of Scottish children have dental disease and over a quarter of a million teeth are extracted from Scottish children each year. The Scottish Executive's white paper, Towards a Healthier Scotland, published in 1999, set a target of 60 per cent of five-year-olds with no experience of dental disease by 2010.
The Scottish Executive regards schools as the key vehicle for the promotion of healthy lifestyles to children, and dental health is already a priority in all Scottish schools' health education programmes. A Scotland-wide baby toothbrushing project, which involved supplying toothbrushes for eight-month old babies, started in September 2001. Nursery children are now being targeted with the two-year 'Oral Health Demonstration Project', which has been awarded 52,576 for 2002-04.
The funding covers materials and start-up costs only, so it is up to nursery teachers to supervise the brushing programme.
Nursery nurse Christine Chatila of Lethan Nursery in Perth said, 'The children have got quickly into the routine. After a snack, they do their dishes and then brush their teeth. They enjoy showing us how shiny their teeth are afterwards.'
Nursery staff put a spot of toothpaste on to greaseproof paper for the children to put on their toothbrushes, in order to avoid contamination that could occur if children were squeezing directly from the toothpaste tube on to their brushes.
Clinical director for Tayside Dr Moira Curnow said, 'Although it is a lot of money up front, this is quite a cheap scheme when you look at how many people you can provide care for. It costs about a pound a head.'
