Introducing Tooth Brushing
Today we had an absolutely incredible day in the school! We launched our tooth brushing programme alongside an educational action day, explaining to the children exactly why brushing their teeth is so important.
What is our tooth brushing project?
Poor dental hygiene is a public health problem worldwide, particularly in third world countries where the importance of teaching dental hygiene is neglected.
Our dentist Dr Sofia has screened and is treating all the students for dental caries. To support this work, we want to target the underlying issue of poor dental hygiene and instil a tooth brushing habit among the children so that they can avoid future complications.
Teacher training
It is important to work with the teachers for the long-term continuation of the programme. Earlier in the week Dr Sofia taught all the teachers everything they need to know from the structure of the tooth, through to what dental plaque and dental caries actually are, how diet and sugar can affect the health of a tooth, how to prevent these problems and the technique of tooth brushing. It went down really well and they're very excited to get started!
Action day in the school
We wanted to make the education fun and entertaining so today we spent time speaking with the children to see what they knew about tooth brushing. We then brought the whole school outside for a drama presentation given by a group of local community health officers – which was really fun, engaging and made the children laugh!
To ensure what we had been teaching really did sink in, we followed it with a quiz on what they had learned with pens as prizes. We also showed them their motivations charts (star charts as we know them) and explained they would get monthly prizes if they did their teeth often enough each day at school!
Our lovely day was ended with oranges and a lot of smiles! We can’t wait to start first thing next week.
