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RESEARCH: M Kent Ranson, Tara Sinha, Mirai Chatterjee, Fenil Gandhi, Rupal Jayswal, Falguni Patel, Saul S Morris, and Anne J Mills Equitable utilisation of Indian community based health insurance scheme among its rural membership: cluster randomised controlled trial BMJ 2007; 334: 1309 [Abstract] [Full text]

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Surveillance and assessment of oral health. Methods of Observation and control.

Eduardo M. Curbeira-Hernandez. MDD, Emma Gil-Ojeda MDD, Juana Hernández-Fernández MsC   (7 June 2007)

Surveillance and assessment of oral health. Methods of Observation and control. 7 June 2007
Eduardo M. Curbeira-Hernandez. MDD, Dentistry Department Gustavo Aldereguía Lima University Hospital. Cienfuegos, Cuba, Emma Gil-Ojeda MDD, Juana Hernández-Fernández MsC Send response to journal: Re: Surveillance and assessment of oral health. Methods of Observation and control.	The analysis of the research published in the BMJ about “Equitable Utilisation of Indian Community Based Health Insurance Scheme among its Rural Membership: Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial” by M Kent Ranson et al. 1; led us to comment about our on health surveillance in Cuba, in regards to oral health. Surveillance of oral health is a dynamic method of observation and control of both healthy and sick persons who complain of different disorders and encompases a complex group of educative, preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic meassures aimed at detecting the most precocious forms of diseases, studying and eliminating the causes that determine or favor their origin in order to contribute to diminish oral morbidity and dental mortality.2 The method constitutes the main factor in the people’s dental assistance during their life. Its development increases the quality of medical assistance, strengthens the job for preventing oral diseases and widens the possibility to include new individuals for observation and control. This allow doctors to fulfill with the principle of classification established while selecting patients according to their oral health status as healthy, healthy with risks, sick and uncapable and/or deficient.3 The main elements of the surveillance method are conditioned by the following achievements: • To preserve oral health in the population, that is, to keep it healthy , guaranteeing dental assistance through life. • To increase surveillance with the resources on disposal and to decrease the prevalence and severity of oral diseases. • To decrease the morbidity of oral diseases and to preserve the greatest number of functional teeth in the mouth. Surveillance of the state of health of the oral cavity constitutes the method of observation and control by which true prophylaxis is reached in a social scale. It constitutes a system of dynamic observation of the population throughout the control of risks according to diseases or groups of population which results in an important working method in the educative and preventive curative orientation of the oral health.4 References: 1. Ranson et al. “Equitable utilisation of Indian community based health insurance scheme among its rural membership: cluster randomised controlled trial”BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.39192.719583. 2. MINSAP. Programa Nacional de Estomatología. ECIMED 2005. 3. Organización Mundial de la Salud. Vigilancia y Evaluación de la Salud Bucodental. Ginebra:1989;21-26. Serie de Informes Técnicos; 782. 4. Toledo-Curbelo GJ. Fundamentos de Salud Pública. Ciudad de La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Médicas . 2004: 174-195. Competing interests: None declared