Little one’s in Riverlea given oral health education
The Oral Health Outreach Programme at Little Busy Bee.
The Johannesburg Health District embarked on an oral health outreach programme at Little Busy Bee Day Care Centre, in Riverlea on May 23.
According to Sandile Gwayi who is the communications manager for Johannesburg Health District, the programme aims to raise awareness about the importance of oral health at Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres.
“We are here to give oral health education and screening because we realised that many parents do not introduce brushing of the teeth at an early age.
“We feel that brushing of teeth should start before the child even turns one year old.
“Milk teeth are very important because they help with chewing, facial appearance, and we also need them to direct the permanent teeth.
“If we find an issue with the child’s teeth, we will write a referral letter to our local dental clinics and refer the child there for treatment,” explained Xolani Zondi, Chief Oral Hygienist.
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With this programme oral health professionals are promoting good oral health to children, their caregivers, teachers and many others.
This is for the first time that the district offers this kind of service at ECD centres.
Over the years, tooth brushing programme was provided at primary schools as guided by the oral health policy.
Other health services such as child well-being, overall growth and development assessments, eye screening and other health services were also provided during this outreach programme.
The environmental team was also there to give a talk to the staff of the creche about environment health.
“Now that ECD oral health policy has been developed and provision of tooth brushing programme at ECD centres is stipulated in the policy, oral health programmes will be provided in some of ECD centres, and Little busy bee is one of the ECDs that will benefit from this programme”, said Zondi.
Zondi also explained that the cost of dental treatment is very expensive and that’s why they as oral hygienist are encouraging parents to look after their children’s teeth from a young age so that they can prevent major treatments when the child is older.
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