Pattern of oral and dental diseases among children on National Health Insurance Scheme presenting at a tertiary health facility in North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

Oral and dental diseases have a growing impact on the health and wellbeing of people in the West African sub-region and in particular on vulnerable and marginalized groups of population among who are children. One of the ways of making dental care affordable and accessible is through the provision of health insurance. Unfortunately, oral health has not been properly positioned in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). In Nigeria, the teaching hospitals play an important role in the health insurance scheme by delivering comprehensive oral and dental health services as the primary care facilities are only accredited to render oral and dental care education. This paper which is a two year retrospective cross sectional study of records of children who received care at the Child Oral Health Clinic of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital examined the pattern of oral and dental diseases managed among the insured enrollees. Dental carries and its sequelae were found to be the most prevalent dental pathology constituting 69.3% of the study participants especially among children aged 6-10 years. Our study showed no significant difference in prevalence between the various dental pathologies across gender (p-value = 0.194) and age groups (p-value = 0.562). It is important that the scope of NHIS dental care at the primary care level be expanded from just dental health education to include at least services without clinical intervention on dental caries. There is the need for formulation of insurance policies that will make dental health, especially prevention of dental caries compulsorily accessible to children of primary school age.