Agenda item 11.1 (Document A72/4, A72/5, A72/INF./2)

FDI World Dental Federation is the official representative body of over one million dentists worldwide.

We are very disappointed by the programme budget and the revised programmatic indicators.

We request the Secretariat to explain why oral health was removed from the programmatic indicators.

Earlier this year at the 144th WHO Executive Board, the Secretariat presented the UHC Index and Tracer Indicators in EB144/7, which included two oral health indicators that focused on monitoring the prevalence of dental caries among 5 to 19-year olds and edentulism among 65+ year olds.

We call upon Member States to monitor and report on these two oral health indicators and we urge the Secretariat to re-integrate them into the programme budget. Do not ignore oral health. Oral health is integral to overall health and realizing the SDGs.

Poor oral health is a silent epidemic affecting billions of people across the globe. More than half of the world’s population (3.5 billion) suffer from untreated oral diseases, which can result in pain, infection, tooth loss and loss of productivity. Untreated oral diseases have increased by 40% since 1990 and will continue to rise unless countries take urgent action. Oral diseases also pose a major economic burden for many countries. In 2010 direct treatment costs due to oral diseases worldwide were estimated at US$298 billion yearly, corresponding to an average of 4-6% of global health expenditure. Now is the time to act on oral health.

FDI stands ready to assist WHO and Member States with collecting oral health data. We are finalizing a set of adult oral health measures co-developed with the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement. We look forward to sharing this resource with Member States and WHO later this year, which will help enable the evaluation and monitoring of oral health.