By Asmau Ahmad
The Nigerian Dental Association has advised the private sector to partner with the government to deliver quality oral healthcare delivery to the citizens.
President of the association, Dr. Bode Ijarogbe, stated this in an interview with the newsmen on the sideline of the association’s biennial general meeting held in Lagos with the theme, ‘Perfect Smile; a Myth or a Reality?’
He said that one major challenge facing oral healthcare delivery in the country was how to finance oral healthcare for people`s benefit.
“The government alone may not be able to fund oral healthcare delivery and so we need the private sector to partner with the government. We are looking for Private Public Partnership where we get some private entities incorporated into government policies.
“We want a situation where there will be synergy in order to ensure that we have good oral healthcare delivery for the average Nigerian,” Ijarogbe said.
He also identified lack of awareness, inadequate facilities, inadequate personnel and high cost as challenges affecting oral healthcare delivery in the country.
“A lot of people do not have money to seek proper dental treatment when they have problem because generally they believe dental treatment is expensive. They do not even give themselves the opportunity of even
approaching a dental surgeon to see them. “Secondly, it may be that the people do not have the information.
“Many people, especially in the rural areas have wrong perception about oral healthcare and do not know where to go to when they have problems. Another problem is that they may not have facilities around them because a lot of them may have to travel several kilometres to get to an established dental clinic,” he said.
Ijarogbe said that there was need to upgrade training sessions to train more dentists to address the dearth of personnel in the sector.
A former president of the association, Dr. Olurotimi Olojede, said it was possible to have perfect smile that improved quality of life if people paid serious attention to their oral health.
“There is a paradigm shift in dentistry; dentistry over the years has been basically therapeutic, but in the 21st century, it has to do with cosmetics and everybody wants to look good.
The arrangement of your teeth tend to show your self-esteem and it is important that we take good care of our teeth to be able to achieve that,” he said.
