Testing the waters

Recent government statistics lay bare England’s dental crisis in young children: three in 10 children aged five have enamel or tooth decay.

In this survey of five-year-olds in England, the national prevalence of children with enamel and/or dentinal decay was 29.3 per cent. Regionally, this ranged from 23.3 per cent in the South West to 38.7 per cent in the North West.

Children living in the most deprived areas of the country were almost three times as likely to have experience of dentinal decay (35.1 per cent) as those living in the least deprived areas (13.5 per cent). There were also disparities in the prevalence of experience of dentinal decay by ethnic group, which was significantly higher in the ‘other’ ethnic group (44.8 per cent) and the Asian or Asian British ethnic group (37.7 per cent).

It's no surprise then that some councils, such as Nottingham, are planning to add fluoride to the water supply. Figures from the government survey show that 34.2 per cent of five-year-olds in the city had obvious signs of dental decay with the average number of teeth affected by decay in Nottingham's five-year-olds being 1.3, while in England the average is 0.8.