BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA FOR
ORAL HEALTH IN VANUATU
 

Posted on Mar 28, 2019
 
 
On November 15th. 2018 I attended the launch of the Vanuatu National Oral Health Study and National Oral Health Policy in Port Vila, Vanuatu 2017 on behalf of the Rotary Club of Ballarat West.
 In the words of the Vanuatu Director of Public Health, Len Tarivonda MPH, ”It is a great joy to present this ground-breaking   2017 National Health Survey of Vanuatu”. David Goldsmith.  
 
 
 
 The study involved detailed questionnaires in the local Bislama language by trained Ni-Van volunteers, followed by professional Oral Examinations by Dentists, of 1,727 people across 70 locations on 24 separate islands from 5 different age cohorts. Where possible emergency pain relief treatment was offered. The study, ably led by dentist and academic Dr. Barry Stewart, took 2 years of planning and action and involved more than 60 volunteers, all who paid their own expenses. The Rotary Club of Ballarat West was one of the many organisations involved by providing professional involvement and volunteer teams plus supplies of instruments, consumables and contributing funding. Our Rotary teams, which included volunteer dentists and nurses from Ballarat, were responsible for the survey of rural Efate, the most populous island of Vanuatu. Other teams accessed remote islands by yacht
 The resulting 217-page statistical study format is to World Health Organisation criteria and will form an important part of the World Data Bank for this area of the Pacific. It will be published in refereed journals both here and overseas and be subject to peer review. 
This study formed the basis for the National Oral Health Policy for Vanuatu 2019-2023, which was released at the same ceremony by the Vanuatu Ministry of Health.
Some of the study findings included
  • The average 6-year-old child starts school in Vanuatu with more than 10 decayed teeth; 35% had experienced toothache in the past 12 months and 18.7% needed urgent treatment
  • 68.9% of 30-45-year-old adults in Vanuatu had tooth decay, 60.5% had gum disease, 58.5% had experienced toothache in the past 12 months and 31.8% needed urgent treatment
The next stage will be to support the development of strategies to implement the aims and objectives of the National Oral Health Policy into the future.