On
29 October, Dr Tin Chun Wong, FDI President and FDI President-Elect Dr Patrick
Hescot had the meeting with World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr
Margaret Chan and Dr Oleg Chestnov, Assistant Director-General, Noncommunicable
Diseases and Mental Health at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.
The discussions were wide-ranging and productive and they all agreed that it
was essential to maintain the dialogue in the interests of strategies to combat
oral diseases and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Prior
to that meeting, FDI President had series of visits with FDI members beginning
in China and ending in Europe by way of Central Asia.
On
10 October she was in Astana in Kazakhstan, where she addressed the opening of
the Kazakhstan Dental Conference. The Kazakhstan Stomatological Association is
a long-standing and well-regarded friend and member of FDI.
Readers
will remember that the Kazakh city of Almaty, formerly called Alma Ata, was the
venue for landmark International conference on primary health care. It was
there, in 1978, that the Alma-Ata Declaration emerged as a major milestone of
the twentieth century in the field of public health. It identified primary
health care as the key to the attainment of the goal of Health for All. As FDI
president pointed out in her opening address, FDI would add its goal of ‘Oral
Health for All’
"It
was also an ideal occasion for me to update members of the Kazakhstan
Stomatological Association on various aspects of FDI’s work, and bring an
international, overseas dimension to national debate. In particular, I focused
on FDI’s contribution to the debate on sugar intake, launched by the World
Health Organization in March and the new FDI guidelines for implementing the
dental amalgam provisions of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
The Data Hub on Global Oral Health and World Oral Health Day are both projects
that need the wholehearted participation of our NDAs. I took the opportunity of
my visit to Kazakhstan, and later in the month to Norway, to thank our members
for continuing to further FDI goals and thereby increase FDI visibility and
efficiency. "She said
Dr.
Tin Chun Wong made a speech in the opening ceremony of Nordental Dental
Exhibition and Congress, which took place in Lillestrøm from 16 to 18 October.
In
her address, which was very well received, she highlighted FDI’s contributions
at international level, citing examples such as helping place oral diseases on
noncommunicable disease agenda, advisory work on the dental amalgam provisions
of the Minamata Convention on Mercury and providing reference for dentists
worldwide through its Policy Statements.
FDI
president had thorough discussion about oral health and related issues in two
separate meetings, one with Bjørn Inge Larsen, Secretary of Health and Care
Services, the other with Knut-Inge Klepp, Division Director in the Directorate
of Health.
It
bears mentioning that Norway is associated with a high-quality of life where
over 90% of the population visits the dentist regularly and great efforts are
made to promote oral health. This does not mean, as my hosts pointed out, a
total absence of oral disease, which remains a problem among certain sectors of
the population.
FDI World Dental Federation
serves as the principal representative body for more than one million dentists
worldwide, developing health policy and continuing education programmes,
speaking as a unified voice for dentistry in international advocacy, and
supporting member associations in global oral health promotion activities. Over
the years, it has developed programmes, initiatives, campaigns, policies and
congresses, always with a view to occupying a space that no other
not-for-profit group can claim.
In other words, FDI is the
authoritative, professional, independent, worldwide voice of dentistry.
FDI designate National Liaison
Officers (NLO) due to achieve its objectives. Currently this position in Iran
is held by Dr. Kaveh Seyedan DDS, MSc, FICD, IRIMC President Councilor of
International Affairs.
Dr. Shima Naghavi, Director of
International Affairs