Brush teeth after getting up and before going to bed and gargle after meals are commonly-known tips for dental care, while such tips are not easy for mentally-challenged kids to master. Recently, doctors from Shanghai Yangpu District Dental Prevention and Treatment Clinicprovided charity dental check-ups for 156 special kids from Fengfan Vocational Junior High School. About 80% of students have periodontal disease, caries and other dental diseases, according to check-up results.
The first group of students receiving check-ups numbered 16, 12 of whom suffered from gingivitis and bleed when brushingteeth, and the remaining 4 have serious caries, according to reporters on the spot. “In 2016, our monitoring on 6 ordinary schools in the district revealed that 26.99% of students suffered from caries,” Huang Shengchun, the head of the District Dental Prevention and Treatment Clinic (DDPTC)said. “29.2% of mentally-challenged kids suffered from caries, which is higher than the average, due to their insufficiencies in cognitive abilities, physical coordination, etc.”
In light of those special children, the DDPTC reached consensus with the School to provide monthly dental care training to help those kids prevent dental diseases. The DDPTC will follow up on those spotted with dental diseases in this check-up and provide a special pass to them. From Monday to Saturday, students visiting DDPTC with receipts issued will be exempted from registering and queuing up, with a 50% discount for their medical fees.
According to statistics, there are 268 physically or mentally challenged children in Yangpu District. Due to their special state in terms of social, physical and psychological needs and livelihood, their need for dental disease treatment and prevention is different from that of ordinary kids. As the only public tiered-2 dental specialty medical institution in the district, the DDPTC is responsible for dental health and disease prevention for kids and teenagers in the district.
The purposes of this charity dental check-ups on physically or mentally-challenged children were to know more about this special group, pay more attention to them, expand the reach of dental care so that more people will benefit, and serve as a basis for the development of comprehensive dental diseases and prevention intervention projects targeting at those children, according to Huang. “In the future, we will pay more attention to the dental health of key groups such as the physically or mentally disadvantaged and the senior citizens, and develop dental disease prevention and treatment centers that combine medical treatment and prevention services to protect the dental health of residents in the district, ” remarked Huang.