Tooth decay is the most common and serious oral disease in the nation and that premature tooth loss in children could have negative health effects that should not be ignored, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Health yesterday said.
Tooth decay in children five and six years old was as high as 79.32 percent in 2011, Ministry of Health and Welfare data showed.
The department said that up to 51.7 percent of the city’s preschool children were reported as having tooth decay last year.
Tooth decay in first year elementary-school students was 30.43 percent, which is lower than the national average of 50.92 percent, the department said.
The WHO’s oral health goal is to see children aged five years or older 90 percent free of tooth decay and less than one tooth decayed for children under the age of 12, it said.
While some people think that baby teeth fall out naturally and that tooth decay in young children does not need to be treated, dentists have suggested that premature tooth loss in children can have other negative health effects, the department said.
Premature loss of baby teeth can cause misaligned adult teeth and malocclusion, and studies have shown that loss of teeth in adults can also increase the risk of developing diseases mostly due to long-term imbalanced nutritional intake caused by poor chewing.
Ministry data showed that only 42.1 percent of people older than 65 have at least 24 teeth; out of a total of 32 permanent teeth.
Taiwanese have an average tooth loss of 2.4 and an average tooth loss of six in people older than 50, a Taipei Dental Association survey showed.
It said that while more than 60 percent of the people surveyed said they felt tooth discomfort in the past six months, they do not see a dentist for regular oral exams.
Many people also do not brush their teeth for more than three minutes, the survey showed.
“Oral health is the ‘outpost’ of the human body’s general health, and it is an important factor that affects the quality of life and learning,” Taipei Dental Association chairman Wu Yong-long (吳永隆) said.
People should have regular oral examinations with a dentist, brush and floss teeth thoroughly using a fluoride toothpaste after meals and before going to bed, eat a balanced diet and limit between-meal snacks to prevent tooth decay, Wu said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods