Assessment of Dental Caries Among 12-15 Year Old School Children in Low Fluoride Areas of Hebri Panchayat, Karkala Taluk, Udupi District, Karnataka State, India

The countries like India, China etc., are facing a rapid growth in their population coupled with an increase in prevailing dental caries and other oral diseases. The public health care systems already under severe strain can ill afford to treat the vast majority of the population in need of dental care. In such a difficult scenario, fluoride can be a boon for countries like India, in providing a cost effective alternative to expensive dental care. Some selected villages in India, have drinking water supply from the schemes of mini water supplies or accelerated rural water supply from tap water or tube wells. In the present scheme, bore wells as the primary source of supply of water into a storage tank which are constructed at one or more centrally located places of the villages and water is supplied through taps provided at tanks. But other villages had NRWS schemes where water is distributed through a network of pipes and tapes regarded as village having tape water to the consumers. The water samples collected from the entire gram panchayats in Karkala were brought to water quality analysis. Open well and Bore well water samples were taken separately from each gram panchayats. The epidemiological study was performed to assess the 12 to 15 year old school going children of Hebri gram panchayat, Karkala taluk in Karnataka for the prevalence of dental caries among them.