As one of the approaches for improving the maternal and child health care system, it was attempted to review the dental part of the maternal and child health handbook. Our recommendations are as follows:
As a basic philosophy, all considerations regarding dental health should be on the same basis and at the same level as holistic health care. Therefore, the dental examination chart and the instructions for dental health care should be arranged in the same page as the general health examination and education at each stage of the physical and mental development.
It is strongly advised to pay attention to the development and underdevelopment of occlusion. It is essentially important to start the dental health examination program specially refered to the type and pathogenic factors of malocclusion as early as possible, so that the developmental changes of maticatory system can be well understood. For this purpose, new criteria for the occlusal examination of deciduous dentition are presented. In the dental health education, instructions for bringing up the morphologically and functionally sound, and traumaresistant masticatory system should be most important, including the informations on effects of breast feeding to the basic growth of the masticatory system, and on the influence of the physical properties of foods on its growth in and after weaning period.
The role of the maternal and child health handbook should be clearly defined as to record all the evidence through the developmental stages, as well as to motivate the mother and child complex towards the self care for health. The influences of mother's diseases and of the affecting stress caused by the treatment of these diseases should be mainly concerned about for fetus, rather than for the maternal body. Spaces must also be provided for recording the child's diseases and preventive care and treatment.
Eruption times of all deciduous teeth have better to be graphically illustrated for the mother to compare her own child's tooth eruption with. Code numbers may be advisable for the easy and accurate extract of the data, when necessary epidemiological investigation would be carried out.