Oct. 25, 2007 — Hundreds of children throughout the Virgin Islands are opening wide this week as dental health providers from New York University's College of Dentistry give oral exams and treatment to children in the Head Start and Early Head Start programs.
A three-day clinic on St. Croix ended Wednesday and transferred to the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas for all-day clinics Thursday and Friday. Some 430 Head Start and Early Head Start children were seen on St. Croix, and the NYU team is hopeful that more than 200 will be seen on St. Thomas before the clinic ends late Friday. The programs, which serve low-income infants through 5-year-olds, require they receive at least one dental exam annually.
The nine-member NYU team is examining each child, providing a basic cleaning and a fluoride veneer treatment, which helps prevent decay. For children with cavities, the team is doing fillings and, in some cases, extractions if the tooth is severely decayed.
The lower the income, the more likely a child has serious dental issues, said Neal G. Herman, who leads the NYU team and is a clinical professor of pediatric dentistry.
"They say 80 percent of decay is seen in 25 percent of the children," Herman said. "The lower the income, the less access to care and to the information about proper dental care. (Decay) is totally preventable, but if your priorities are paying the rent and putting food on the table, you're not going to worry so much about teeth."
Herman said his team is also in the territory to educate local dentists about pediatric practices. A seminar was held Monday night on St. Croix, and one was scheduled for Thursday night on St. Thomas, aimed at dentists and allied health professionals. His hope is to train enough dentists in pediatric practices so they can begin to provide the exams as required by the Head Start Program. Currently, the only pediatric dentist in the Virgin Islands is Dr. Sonia Taylor-Griffith on St. Thomas. While it isn't necessary to be a pediatric dentist to conduct the Head Start exams, it's still hard recruiting dentists for the job, Herman said.
"It's a real issue," he said. "And it's not unique here. Dentists often don't feel comfortable handling children."
Monday's turnout for the seminar on St. Croix seemed to support his claim: "Fewer than 10 people showed up, and only one was a dentist." Herman said the audience included nurses, a radiologist, some Head Start representatives and even a urologist, but only one dentist, Horace Griffith, husband of Sonia Taylor-Griffith.
Included among the NYU team is a St. Croix native, Alexandra Monibo, who will receive her dental degree in May. Afterwards she'll do a one-year residency and eventually return to St. Croix in hopes of setting up a local practice.
"I don't want to specialize in pediatrics, but I want to see pediatric patients," Monibo said. "Right now I love seeing everyone."
Monibo urged parents to begin bringing their children to a dentist early.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently adjusted its recommendation for a first-time visit to the dentist. Where it formerly recommended age 3, now it recommends coming on the occasion of the first eruption of a tooth, which is typically six months. Monibo said parents need to understand that if decay starts in baby teeth, it could set the stage for decay problems once permanent teeth come in.
"We are born with our primary and our permanent teeth underneath," she said. "If there's decay in the primary teeth, decay can go down the root or transmit through the bloodstream and get passed along."
By getting children under a dentist's care early, prevention can begin, she said.
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