Every year, Oral Health Day is celebrated on March 20, and like all the other days in the calendar, it’s an opportunity to raise public awareness. More specifically, the aim is to raise awareness of oral and dental health. To find out more.

Why hold an Oral Health Day?

For the FDI World Dental Federation, this World Oral Health Day is a call to “the world to unite to help reduce the burden of oral diseases, which affect individuals, health systems and economies everywhere “.

As the voice of the dental profession, the FDI has 156 member associations in 137 countries. This represents a total of over 900,000 dentists worldwide.

In 2024, the FDI is launching a new campaign running until 2026, with the theme: ” A happy mouth…is a happy body “.

Oral Health Day: what is La Chaîne de l’Espoir doing?

In its Global Oral Health Status Report, published at the end of 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) reveals that 45% of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people, suffer fromoral diseases. The UN agency points out that three out of every four people affected live in low- and middle-income countries.

Among La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s various actions in favor of sick children is the treatment of maxillofacial pathologies, a term that covers noma in particular. In Mali and Burkina Faso, for example, we have been running a program called ” Les Sourires de l’Espoir ” since 2014, which involves a comprehensive approach:

• Mobilizing healthcare personnel and civil society players by raising their awareness and training them in the specificities of noma,
• Raising awareness among the population in the target areas, as well as among traditional and religious leaders, of the means of prevention, causes and detection of noma,
• Detect, treat and operate on patients suffering from facial pathologies and malformations, while training local medical and paramedical teams.