Why you should care about your child’s dental health

There is nothing that warms the heart like seeing your child smile. But it is also discouraging when every time this child smiles, all you see are greyish, broken teeth instead of white. It is a constant reminder that as a parent, you probably didn’t do enough to save your child’s teeth.

For Ms Allen Niyonzima, a resident of Kireka suburb in Kampala, it has been three years of stress, moving from clinic to clinic just to have her child’s teeth repaired.

When her daughter was eight months-old, Ms Niyonzima says she started noticing changes in her teeth.

Then the teeth started to decay and developed cracks. From decay, the teeth started becoming weak and each time she ate any hard foods, at least one tooth would break.

Now at four years old, all that remains of Ms Niyonzima’s daughter’s teeth is a small white lining in the gum. You would think her teeth are just beginning to develop.

Ms Niyonzima says she has consulted about 18 dentists but it has been a fruitless effort.

“The dentists have asked me not to tamper with the gum so that that when the milk teeth are all out, she will develop better ones,”she says.

Common problem
Dr Amon Aruho, a dentist with Smile Dental Clinic in Mbarara, says cases of teeth decay are common among young children. While the extent of the problem is not known in terms of statistics because some parents don’t take their children to see a dentist, the few who visit a professional health worker gives an indication of a much bigger problem in the community.

Health experts say even babies can get cavities in their teeth and if left untreated, dental disease can continue throughout childhood into the adult years.

He explains that the primary teeth of a child develop between the age of four and eight months. “At this age, the immunity of children is low. So when the milk teeth start forming, the children develop fever and the parents rush to give them some painkillers in the form of syrups. It is these syrups used that are contributing to the decay.

If the decay is not controlled, it can spread to the rest of the teeth.

Usually the upper teeth are more affected but when it is a syrup, all the teeth are affected.

According to Mr Brian Rushaju, a dentist at Run Dental Clinic in Kampala, most parents pay little attention to their children’s dental health.

Cavities are a preventable problem but because children often don’t feel pain until tooth decay becomes serious, it becomes harder to notice and address in the early stages.

Children also tend to get cavities in the back teeth where they aren’t easy to see.

While regular dental checkups allow dentists to find cavities early on when they are easier to treat, neglected cavities can weaken teeth and take more than one procedure to fix. And because children usually don’t complain about toothaches, parents assume their teeth are healthy.

Rushaju says parents should always take keen interest in their children’s dental health and not only when the children start complaining of toothache.

For some parents, culture has played a big role in their decisions over their children’s dental health.

For instance, according to Mr Rushaju, some parents take their children to herbalists to remove the teeth which are starting to develop in the early stages with the thinking that they are false.

What the parents do not know is that the herbalists only contribute to complicating the problem instead of addressing it.

In other cases, Mr Rushaju says the over use of syrups is also contributing to the destruction of children’s teeth.

He says that syrups have a lot of sugars, and when a child does not brush their teeth after taking such syrups, it could lead to teeth decay in the long term.

“Most parents don’t care about cleaning their children’s teeth. It is not a good habit for children who use bottles to feed to sleep with them in their mouth. The milk they are taking activates the bacteria in the mouth,” Mr Rushaju noted.

Appropriate time for weaning is between 12 to 16 months but some parents take beyond two years and this also contributes to the decay of some teeth.

Gum disease
The other challenge is gum disease, but which is not as common as a tooth abscess. In this particular case, pus collects and is enclosed in the tissues of the jaw bone at the apex of an infected tooth.

Usually a bacterial infection accumulates in the soft, often dead, pulp of the tooth. This can be caused by tooth decay or broken teeth. Mr Rushaju emphasises that treatment of any tooth infection should be taken seriously as it would also cause pus.

According to Mr Rushaju, when a person eats food, it is bio degraded by some bacteria which live in the mouth and produce acids. As a result, the teeth lose calcium due to the acid formed by bacteria.

He advises that brushing for children start as soon as a child starts developing teeth.

Foods
The food people eat today is also contributing to many of the dental health problems among children.

Processed foods such as ice cream, biscuits and sodas are big culprits.

Globally, the World Health Organisation says that oral disease is the fourth most expensive disease to treat.

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