Children’s Oral Health

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing this debate on child oral health and tooth decay. I agree with all his comments, in particular those about sugar consumption and supermarket offers on high-sugar products. Anyone who has been in a supermarket over the past couple of weeks will have seen the huge amount of Halloween offers on sugar products for children for trick or treating—“two for one” or “buy one and get four free” and so on.

Poor oral health is an extremely important yet too often ignored issue that represents a major public health challenge, both in relation to its adverse impact on our children’s health and wellbeing and to the NHS budget and wider resources. We have already heard that when it comes to oral health, too many of our children quite literally have nothing whatever to smile about. Every area of the country is affected by poor childhood oral health to varying degrees, including Coventry, the city that I represent. The proportion of five-year-olds in Coventry with tooth decay stands at almost 30%, which is considerably higher than the England national average of 25%. Worryingly, the proportion of hospital admissions for tooth extractions in the city has increased by a massive 60% since 2010.

Children with poor oral health are likely to have decayed, missing and filled teeth that can cause severe pain, infection, sleepless nights, weight loss and developmental problems. But not just their physical health is adversely affected; they also often experience psychological problems such as low self-esteem, a lack of confidence, conduct disorders, reduced school performance and social functioning, and an increase in bullying. These physical and psychological problems combined are likely to have a huge impact on a child’s life and even on their long-term life chances, as we have heard.

There are significant pressures on NHS services and finances. Tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions for young children and the NHS wastes hundreds of hours and millions of pounds each year dealing with the consequences of the problem through tooth extractions that range from a single tooth to full mouth clearances—a dreadful thought in children so young. All that proves that the economic costs of childhood tooth decay are as unsustainable for the NHS as the human costs are unacceptable for the child.

We can stop tooth decay in its tracks, because it is almost entirely preventable, as we have heard. We can tackle the problem by providing better oral health education, by improving public awareness of and access to children’s dental services and by addressing poor diet—particularly excessive sugar consumption. I agree with all the measures to prevent tooth decay that have been mentioned. But clearly, the statistics show that more needs to be done. Simple preventive steps and accessible information can mitigate the impact of poor oral health both on the individual and on our health services. Surely we can all get behind that.