Preventive responses to various national problems.

The prevalence of dental disease appears to be increasing, especially in developing countries. The adoption of traditional Western-style oral health care delivery systems, which may be entirely inappropriate to the local circumstances, has resulted in the establishment of expensive and inefficient services in many parts of the world. In planning a realistic oral health service, administrators must first identify the problem, estimate available manpower in terms of number, type and distribution and identify the economic resources which can reasonably be allocated to oral health. Five categories of oral health status have been identified in various countries ranging from a situation characterized by very low, stable or increasing oral health problems with an acute shortage of manpower and almost non-existent dental care delivery system to the situation found in the most advanced countries where the oral health problem, though very high, may be already decreasing and where there is adequate manpower and delivery systems are highly developed. A preventive strategy for each of these five categories is presented which it is hoped would lead to an improvement of the oral status of the world's population as fast and as cheaply as possible.