THE ORAL HEALTH ATLAS Oral health is one of the most neglected areas of global health, yet 90% of people have had dental problems or toothache caused by caries and severe periodontists affects up to 15%. Oral cancer is the eighth most common cancer worldwide, and the most common in men in South East Asia. In the Philippines, as many as 97% of six-year-old have dental caries. The related pain and sepsis affect a child’s ability to eat, sleep, concentrate resulting in a host of problems from school absenteeism to malnutrition. Access to oral care is a major problem: Germany and the UK have one dentist per 1,000 population, low-income and middle-income countries have one dentist per 50,000 people, but in some sub-Saharan African countries the ratio is only one per 900,000 people.
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