TEMA NCCE EDUCATES SCHOOL CHILDREN ON ORAL HEALTH (PAGE 45, JULY 28, 2010)

The Tema Office of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), has extended its activities to promote oral health education among school children to schools in the metropolis .
As part of the programme, NCCE officials in Tema have in collaboration with Unilever Ghana and the Dental department of the Tema Polyclinic launched the oral education programme at the Salvation Army Basic School .
Over 453 school children from Kindergarten to Junior High School of the school benefited from the programme.
They were taken through oral health, including how to keep their mouth healthy and how to brush their teeth.
Health officials from the Tema Polyclinic took the children through the exercise.
According to the Programme Officer for the project Mr Theophilus Amewu , the exercise was to enable the children to have healthy growth.
He said the exercise would cover schools in the Tema Metropolis and expressed the hope that by the end of it many children would have learnt the proper way of brushing their teeth and how often it should be done.
The Headteacher of the school, Mr Samuel Gyimah Abaidoo, commended the NCCE for including children in their activities.
He said health was included in the school’s curriculum but the exercise would help the children to understand better the need to keep their teeth healthy because of the inclusion of the professional dentists.
A Principal Dental Nurse at the Tema Polyclinic, Ms Hilda Achengba, who took the children through the practical way of brushing the teeth, explained that tooth decay was on the increase and advised parents to send their children to the clinic at least every six months for check up.
She said tooth decay and other problems were on the increase among children because they usually took in a lot of sweets .
Ms Achengba urged the children to rinse their mouths anytime they ate sweets and that their parents should provide them with soft tooth brushes.
She said soft brushes were the best because hard brushes had given the users cuts resulting in swollen gums and gingivitis.
Ms Achengba took the children through practical ways of using the brush after which they were given some tubes of Close Up tooth paste.