Colgate sponsors new dental initiative
Viewers who are today old enough to be starting families may remember growing up with Radio Belize and the Colgate Cavity Fighters Club. Today, twenty years later, that company is still fighting cavities, albeit on a larger scale.
Over the past several years the Colgate – Palmolive company has consistently aided Caribbean countries in dental health, which is not surprising since its the region’s largest manufacturer of toothpaste. But this year the company has embarked on a more innovative global educational program called “Brighter Smiles, Brighter Futures.” A total of seventy countries will be participating, including Belize.
Dr. Christopher Bennett, Chief Dental Surgeon
“As you know Jackie, prevention is always the best activity for any aspect of health and even though in the Ministry of Health we have ongoing dental health education programs and dental disease prevention programs, we are now grateful that we have some major input from Colgate in helping us to expand our ongoing regular dental health education programs.”
But while the program targets children, Chief Dental Surgeon, Doctor Christopher Bennett says it is designed for everyone.
Dr. Christopher Bennett
“Even though the children, in fact the programs that we have, have some family aspects. So when the kids go home, what they learn in school about dental health, in fact it is imparted to the parents. So there is an indirect impart of this message to the adults.”
Bennett says the objective of the oral care education program is to excite, inspire and engage children in good dental health.
Dr. Christopher Bennett
“In other words we are not just going to give the message of good dental health, we are using a lot of good visual aids, video tapes. We have activities, experiments; we have a guide, a manual for the teachers to use with a number of activities and puzzles. So the kids will be learning about good dental health and still be having a lot of fun and so we feel the message will last even longer than the way we planned it traditionally.”
To help teachers integrate the program into their curriculum dental health educators participated in a workshop, learning how to teach teachers to effectively promote dental health care in the classroom.
Dr. Glenda Major, Dentist, Corozal
“I am a firm believer that prevention is better than cure and from in participating in this workshop we will be better prepared to go into the schools to give dental health education and so on to sort of increase the awareness of the importance of prevention.”
Dr. Peter Allen, Dentist, Dangriga
“One of the issues that we face within the schools is that the teachers do not have all the materials in order to teach the children exactly the message that they want them to receive. This program sponsored by Colgate we hope is going to provide those materials and also the dental personnel and the HECOPAB personnel to get the message across. We fully expect to continue to reduce the number of dental care in periodontal disease seeing in the children by as much as fifty percent over the next five to six years.”
And that education, according to Dr. Bennett, is already being reported. Bennett says from surveys done regularly over the past several years, there has been a definite reduction in dental decay and a more positive attitude towards dental treatment. The “Brighter Smiles, Brighter Futures” dental program hopes to accelerate that trend.
The program is being co-sponsored by Hofius Ltd., Colgate’s distributor in Belize, in collaboration with the Ministries of Health and Education. Fifty three thousand primary school students between the ages of six and twelve will be participating in the program.
