IFDH President's Report

September 2020

COVID-19, IFDH Summit and Leadership Conference, Periodontitis Clinical Practice again Guidelines, World Cavity-free Future Day

Once again, the world and our profession was engulfed by COVID-19.

Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) published guidance advocating that ‘Oral health care involving aerosol generating procedures should be avoided or minimized and minimal invasive procedures using hand instruments should be prioritized’ (published on August 3rd) and even calls for a delay of all urgent dental care (published August 19th).

In many countries dental and dental hygiene care is more or less back on track thanks to intensive precautionary actions and strict protocols. We are happy to be able to support our patients with our professional dental hygiene care and advice in order to obtain and maintain good oral health as well as a good general health and lifestyle – the best precaution for any disease! For the latest news on Cavid-19: visit our website with a WHO update every week.

Unfortunately ‘back to nomal’ does not apply to many major events, live symposia, dental shows etc. Many congresses in 2020 and 2021 have been cancelled and even Europerio, a major international event with 10,000-12,000 participants, scheduled for Copenhagen, Denmark in 2021 has been postponed untill 2022.

The same applies for our IFDH Global Oral Health Summit and Leadership Conference, planned for Barcelona, March 2021. We are considering replacing the event with an online workshop as a ‘Covid-safe’ forerunner to a live event during the International Symposium on Dental Hygiene (ISDH) in Dublin, Ireland, August 2022. Or, if a vaccine is on the market by the beginning in 2021, have a live symposium half way 2021 to celebrate IFDH’s 35th Anniversary and if possible, an ‘International Oral Hygiene Day’. To investigate our members’ preference, IFDH undertook a survey among the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Federation and for now the majority of the delegates seem to prefer an online session in 2021 and a follow-up during during ISDH 2022 in Dublin. We will keep you informed!

News about the two major issues in our profession:

Periodontitis and Caries

In 2018 the European Federation of Periodontology (EFP) released a new global classification system for periodontal health, diseases and conditions – the outcome of a joint workshop held by the EFP and the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP). Following up on this the EFP has now released an evidence-based treatment guide for periodontitis. According to EFP’s new treatment guideline, it is estimated that annually,patients spend approximately US $54 billion accross the globe on direct treatment of periodontitis. A disease that can in many cases have been prevented and avoided by proper oral health care. However, these guidelines outline how to manage the disease. The paper, titled ‘Treatment of stage I-III periodontitis -FP S3 level clinical practice guideline’, was published online on 27 July 2020 in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology.

In its efforts to reduce dental caries worldwide, the Alliance for a Cavity-Free Future (ACFF) introduced a World Cavity-free Future Day (WCFF Day), this year held on October 14th, 2020. This year’s campaign focuses on the theme ‘Smiles Across Generations’ and a large number of resources have been developed. These include information documents for the profession as well as the public, social media images, an infographic in several languages and a ‘Campaign Toolkit’ with a wealth of ideas on how the resources provided can be used to share the message of WCFFDay.

As a partner of ACFF we would like to encourage you to share and use the information provided by ACFF or introduce a World Cavity-Free Future day in your country.

Lets embrace this time of change to be creative in the ways in which we deliver our oral health message and look forward to meet – in person or virtually – during our Global Oral Health Summit and Executive Leadership Conference in 2021 and our International Symposium on Dental Hygiene 2022, Dublin, Ireland.

Stay safe, stay healthy.
Corrie Jongbloed, President IFDH