The Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) has rolled out an extensive survey, in collaboration with Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Dentistry Department, to record the oral health of four to eight year-olds who have been randomly selected to participate in an oral epidemiological study in Qatar.
The survey is expected to be completed by December 2017 and results will be announced in April 2018, QNA reported yesterday.
Key stakeholders such as Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), Ministry of Interior (MOI), Qatar Petroleum (QP) and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education support the survey.
The Qatar Child Oral Health Survey will give healthcare leaders valuable information to benchmark the oral health of young children in order to identify means of improving it and obtaining better outcomes from children’s use of dental services.
Dr Asmaa Al Khtib, Program Manager of the National Oral Health project 1.9 urges parents who receive the formal consent form and survey questionnaire through their child’s school to support this initiative.
“The four to eight year old children involved in the survey represent an ideal segment of our population and will identity the oral health status of the next generation of adults in this country. Having robust baseline data will enable key policy decisions and allow us to design future services according to the needs of the population.”
Led by PHCC, the survey was developed in collaboration with the University of Adelaide and includes a comprehensive questionnaire on the children’s eating and drinking habits and oral hygiene practices. The survey sample was randomly selected from a list of public and private nurseries/kindergartens(KG) and elementary/primary schools in Qatar.
The scope of the survey also includes a validation study of dental fluorosis diagnosis among eight year olds and fluoride intake study for four year olds.