‘Why govt, society must pay more attention to dental health’

FOR 700 residents of six of the 10 local governments in Oke Ogun area of Oyo State, there was a breath of fresh air last week, as the Cleft and Deformity Foundation reached out to residents of the area to give intervention on dental diseases. By the end of the week-long programme, the team of experts from the foundation, led by its founder, Dr Seidu Bello, had attended to the cry for help from many beneficiaries, conducting surgeries, carrying out cleaning and providing drugs and other treatments to various types of dental ill-health.

With a population of about 1.6 million people spread across 100 towns and villages of Oke Ogun, Dr Seidu reckoned that access to dental health care in the area had been poor and abysmal, lamenting how there “are only two dental clinics in Saki and Iseyin cities.”

This development, coupled with the personal experience he had from his father’s travail on dental ill-health, Dr Seidu said, was the motivation for coming up with the effort, noting that his target was to “assist the people, predominantly poor people who cannot have access to dental clinics and to also create awareness about these diseases and refer the people to the only few available treatment centres. I also had the hope that through our effort, we would be able to present our report to government to prove to them that more dental clinics are needed in Oke Ogun area.”

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At the end of the exercise, which touched Irepo, Saki East, Atisbo and Iwajowa, among others, Dr Seidu advocated for a new approach to dental health, noting it was as important as other aspects of health care delivery being given attention.

Lamenting the poor attitude of the government and the society to dental health, Dr Seidu, a dentist and surgeon, maintained that it is important for Nigerians to take dental health seriously, because it is associated with an unimaginable stress to the society, loss of manpower and can ultimately lead to death, urging the society to pay more attention to dental health by visiting dental clinics at least twice in a year for general cleaning. He also urged the government to assist in establishing a dental clinic in at least every local government of Oyo State.