Dental nursing in Suriname: training and deployment.

A program for training dental nurses in Suriname is described. The objective of the program is to alleviate the serious manpower shortage in a country with 16 dentists for a population of 400,000. The program is compared with others in the world to demonstrate unique characteristics. This program is one more indicator of the growing trend in developing countries toward using the dental nurse model for alleviating the high rate of oral diseases found in children and young adults.