Three of the important dental preparations – topical fluoride-containing preparations (such as toothpaste), glass ionomer cement and silver diamine fluoride – are featured for the first time in World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines for Adults and Children 2021.
The updated essential medicines list, which includes 20 new medicines for adults and 17 for children, had never deemed these dental preparations as essential until now.This inclusion is expected to increase the access of these oral care products to a wider range of patients thus decreasing the burden of the most prevalent disease in the world-Dental Caries.
WHO’s model lists aim to identify those chemical agents, medicines, medical devices, and other medical products that everyone should always have access to, and that all governments should ensure are available and affordable to their populations.
WHO Model List of Essential Medicines is basically divided into two parts:
1. Core list : presents a list of minimum medicine needs for a basic health-care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost–effective medicines for priority conditions. Priority conditions are selected on the basis of current and estimated future public health relevance, and potential for safe and cost-effective treatment.
2. Complementary list: presents essential medicines for priority diseases, for which specialized diagnostic or monitoring facilities, and/or specialist medical care, and/or specialist training are needed. In case of doubt medicines may also be listed as complementary on the basis of consistent higher costs or less attractive cost-effectiveness in a variety of settings.
Under the leadership of Benoit Varenne, D.D.S., Ph.D., dental officer at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the NYU Dentistry WHO Collaborating Center for Quality-improvement, Evidence-based Dentistry supported the applications for all three dental treatments for submission to the WHO Expert Committee, which included coordinating contributors, gathering evidence and drafting the application dossiers.
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