An epidemic of tooth decay is on horizon, councils warn

Latest figures show there were nearly 45,000 hospital operations to remove rotten teeth in children and teenagers last year, equating to nearly 180 a day, according to the Local Government Association.

With seven in ten families with children under five reporting more snacking in the household during the lockdown, the nation's poor record on oral hygiene is likely to have worsened, the LGA has warned.

Closures of early years settings for many children during lockdown has also led to the loss of supervised brushing time and fewer opportunities to educate young children and parents about good oral health.

The LGA believes councils, schools and other educational settings are keen to restart supervised brushing schemes and scale up their oral health work, and is calling for prevention efforts to be fully funded to help keep children’s teeth healthy, including reversing a reduction of more than £700 million in the public health grant to councils between 2015/16 and 2019/20.

Cllr Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the LGA’s Community Wellbeing Board warned that any hospital admissions for dental procedures will put added pressure on the NHS.

Toothbrushing guidance

Early years settings and schools that run supervised toothbrushing programmes have been issued with new Government guidance this month. They will be able to resume supervised toothbrushing at the start of the autumn term.

Settings are being advised not to use the wet brushing model during the COVID-19 recovery phase because it is considered more likely to risk droplet and contact transmission and offers no additional benefit to oral health over dry brushing.

Guidance for the dry toothbrushing model includes:

• Supervisors and children (under supervision) should wash their hands or use hand sanitiser before and after the toothbrushing session.
• There should be a separate toothbrush storage system for each ‘group’ or ‘bubble’ of children where applicable.
• Each toothbrush should be individually identifiable enabling each child to recognise their own brush.
• Each child should collect their toothpaste, a tissue or paper towel (so they can spit any excess toothpaste into this after brushing), and their toothbrush from the storage system.
• Tissue or paper towel and toothpaste paper should be disposed of immediately in a waste bag.
• Toothbrushes must not be washed together in the sink.
• Under supervision, each child should in turn rinse their own toothbrush and its handle at a sink under cold running water. Water should be left running to avoid each child touching the tap.

Further information

‘Covid-19: guidance for supervised toothbrushing programmes in early years and school settings’: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-supervised-toothbrushing-programmes/covid-19-guidance-for-supervised-toothbrushing-programmes-in-early-years-and-school-settings