National Smile Month kicks off today – a month of raising awareness of the basics that everyone can, and should do to protect their oral health.
The B2A Tanzania team with their smilies
Oral health is such an important contributor to your general health, but it’s often neglected. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is because access to treatment is so available in the UK. Let’s face it, when you have pain, you can get help. It might take the form of painkillers, a trip to A&E or your on-call dentist, but within a couple of days, you can get relief.
But not where we work, and not in the majority of the world. More than 70% of the world has no access to even simple pain relief. So prevention, and provision of training to increase capacity for basic care, is so important.
And that’s why we are supporting the BDHF’s campaign to raise awareness of how to foster good oral health.
- Because we want people to understand that they can take simple steps to protect their oral health.
- Because we don’t want them to take for granted the services that are available to them.
- Because the principles of NSM are what we are trying to apply here.
During the month, as well as taking photos of our team goofing off with the smilies, we will be talking about some of the ways that a lack of prevention impact people who have no access to care when they need it. We’ll also be continuing to promote NSM’s messages to patients in our own dental clinic – Hope Dental Centre (whose profits fund our administrative costs).
Hopefully we can raise some awareness of why this stuff is important. Have a look around our website, visit the National Smile Month site, and see what you can, and should be doing, and do your mouth a favour.
