Oral health: children - international data

Dental caries is still a major oral health problem in most industrialised countries, affecting 60-90% of schoolchildren and the vast majority of adults (Petersen, 2003). The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Oral Health Country/Area Profile Project provide information on trends in dental caries, mainly among 12-year-old children, from 1937.

The most recent figures give insight into how dental caries prevalence compares in the new millennium across a large number of countries. However, as some results are from national surveys with representative samples, while others relate only to small local surveys, caution is required in making simplistic inter-country comparisons using the raw data. It is also necessary to understand the public health aims behind the WHO 'basic methods' diagnostic criteria employed by most datasets in the databank; and these surveys are only intended to provide an overview of caries prevalence.