From Ms C. Stillman-Lowe
SIR,—Paul Clein (PJ, November 4, p683) is right to ask for a concerted Government effort to tackle dental caries in children in deprived areas by means other than water fluoridation. This is what the Government proposed in its recently published strategy "Modernising NHS dentistry: implementing the NHS plan”. However, dental health education and oral health promotion interventions are far from 100 per cent effective, as systematic reviews of the published literature have found. It may be, therefore, that with the informed consent of the local population, in some areas water fluoridation is the more cost-effective option.
Catherine Stillman-Lowe Reading, Berkshire