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Oral health: children - international data

Dental caries is still a major oral health problem in most industrialised countries, affecting 60-90% of schoolchildren and the vast majority of adults (Petersen, 2003). The WHO Global Oral Health Database and the WHO Oral Health Country/Area Profile Programme provide information on trends in dental caries, mainly among 12-year-old children, from 1937. The most recent figures give insight into how dental caries prevalence compares in the new millennium across a large number of countries. As, however, some results are from national surveys with representative samples, while others relate only to small local surveys, caution is required in making simplistic inter-country comparisons using the raw data. It is also necessary to understand the public health aims behind the WHO 'basic methods' diagnostic criteria employed by most datasets in the databank, and these surveys are only intended to provide an overview of caries prevalence.

Data for...
5-year-olds
12-year-olds
12-year-olds - trends