A review on the school dental services in Sri Lanka

The school dental program in Sri Lanka is operated under the Ministry of Health (MOH) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to improve the oral health of schoolchildren. The Oral Health Unit of the Family Health Bureau (FHB), which is under the MOH, is the national focal point for the provision of school dental services. This program provides health promotion activities to prevent the most common oral diseases among schoolchildren and treatment of existing diseases. Preventive measures focused on schoolchildren are the most cost-effective measure to improve the oral health of schoolchildren and will reduce the cost of oral healthcare in adulthood. School dental therapists (SDTs) play an important role at the point of service delivery by executing oral health promotion, screening, preventing, treating, and referring for an appropriate level of care. The objective of this review is to explore the school dental services provided under the Oral Health Unit to provide recommendations for improvement. Data collection was done from July 2023 to August 2023. Qualitative data were collected through semistructured key informant interviews. In addition, a desk review was done to collect secondary data available at the Oral Health Unit, FHB, to explore the present situation of the services. Data were analyzed using the content analysis method. “Inadequacy of service coverage” was identified as the main problem in school dental services in Sri Lanka, leading to a higher prevalence of untreated oral diseases among schoolchildren. The root causes for this problem were mainly human resource related. Other root causes were related to financial support, infrastructure, resource allocation, and processes. This review proposes human resource-related strategies to address those root causes. This recommends increasing the human resources for the service coverage, motivating the SDTs and developing their capacity to deliver the service at the point of care.