UK Campaign Calling for Action on Water Fluoridation - One Year On
National Alliance for Equity in Dental Health
The Call For Action campaign, launched on 4 November 1996 at the House of Commons, now has the backing of a broad alliance of 33 national organisations ranging from the British Dental Association to MENCAP, Help the Aged and Unison Healthcare. (see list of supporting organisation below).
At a campaign Symposium at the House of Commons on 3 November 1997 it was agreed that in future the campaign alliance will be known as the National Alliance for Equity in Dental Health. Since the launch of the campaign last year, the number of national organisations actively involved in the alliance has grown steadily from 20 to 33 (see list attached). The alliance is organised informally, with the British Fluoridation Society and the British Dental Association jointly taking the lead campaigning role.
AIM
- To achieve action which will result in the 1985 Fluoridation Act working in the way Parliament intended.
The aim is deliberately non-specific because it is recognised that there are several potential routes to the desired goal; for example amending the Act, or, in England and Wales where the industry is privatised, strengthening the powers of the Director of Water Services
BACKGROUND
The background to the campaign is the obdurate refusal by several water suppliers to implement new fluoridation schemes at the request of health authorities. In March 1996 the BMA Board of Science issued a statement that the Government should ensure that water suppliers do implement water fluoridation when it is technically feasible and when requested to do so by health authorities. Subsequently, the British Dental Association, the British Medical Association, the NHS Confederation, and the British Fluoridation Society agreed to campaign jointly for water fluoridation.
CAMPAIGN MESSAGES
- that water fluoridation reduces the inequalities in dental health associated with material and social deprivation;
- that water fluoridation is the most cost-effectiveness preventive strategy for reducing dental caries; and
- that it is unacceptable for the water industry (by refusing health authorities' requests for fluoridation) to dictate public health policy.
| ORGANISATIONS SUPPORTING THE CAMPAIGN CALL FOR ACTION: |
Recognising the link between poor dental health, social deprivation and the lack of a fluoridated water supply, we jointly call upon the Government, local authorities and the water industry to take action to ensure that fluoridation is introduced wherever it is practicable to do so and wherever there is a demonstrable health need.
British Dental Association
British Medical Association
British Fluoridation Society
NHS Confederation
Action and Information on Sugars
Association of Directors of Public Health Medicine
Association for Public Health
British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry
British Association for Community Child Health
British Dental Health Foundation
British Dental Hygienists Association
British Dietetic Association
British Society of Dentistry for the Handicapped
British Society of Gerodontology
British Society for Paediatric Dentistry
- Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
- Faculty of General Dental Practitioners (UK) of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
- Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom
- FDI World Dental Federation
- Health Education Authority
- Health Promotion Wales
- Help The Aged
- Institute of Health Education
- MENCAP
- National Dental Health Education Group
- NHS Consultants Association
- Oral Health Promotion Research Group
- Public Health Alliance
- Scottish Association for Community Child Health
- Socialist Health Association
- The Patients Association
- The Royal Society of Health
- Unison Health Care
CAMPAIGN LAUNCH
The campaign was launched by Kevin Barron MP at a packed meeting at the House of Commons on 4 November 1996. The British Dental Association issued a News Release and Parliamentary briefing, and the following 4 reports were published:
Report of Symposium
Campaign Calling for Action on Water Fluoridation - One Year On
MONDAY 3 NOVEMBER 1997 3.30PM - 5PM Grand Committee Room, House of Commons
One hundred and fifty people, including at least 20 MPs, attended a packed meeting at the House of Commons on Monday 3 November 1997 to mark the first anniversary of the Campaign Calling for Action on Water Fluoridation. The aim of the campaign is to achieve action by Government to ensure that the 1985 Water (Fluoridation) Act works in the way that Parliament intended - that is that water suppliers fluoridate supplies when asked to do so by health authorities.
The meeting was jointly sponsored by Kevin Barron MP and Richard Burden MP, and was organised by the British Fluoridation Society and the British Dental Association on behalf of the National Alliance for Equity in Dental Health, an impressive alliance of 33 national organisations ranging from BFS and the BDA through BASCD, the British Medical Association, the Public Health Alliance, MENCAP, the Patients Association, and Unison Health Care.
The meeting was Chaired by BFS Chairman Mike Lennon, and excellent short presentations were given by:
- Kevin Barron MP, Chairman of the Labour Backbench Health Committee, who restated his own strong personal support for water fluoridation, and expressed the view that Parliament intended decisions about fluoridation to be taken by health authorities, not water suppliers, and that a badly drafted clause in the Act had since prevented this;
- Tom Brake MP (standing in at short notice for Simon Hughes MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Health, who had to make a statement to the House). Mr Brake expressed his strong personal support for fluoridation, and regret that he had not been exposed to fluoridated water as a child. He was confident that, given the high level of support for the measure, the current campaign would be successful in extending fluoridation to those areas most in need;
- John Hunt, Chief Executive of the British Dental Association, who reported the latest results of the BDA’s survey of MPs’ views on water fluoridation, which shows that 70% of MPs support fluoridation;
- Nigel Hawkes, Science Editor of The Times, who discussed public perception of Risk, and in particular the role of the media in communicating Risk. Mr Hawkes concluded that nowadays risks are fewer, but more feared, and that it was a mistake to blame the media for the public’s perception of risk - except where the media has used blatant lies;
- Richard Burden MP who spoke about the politics of the introduction of fluoridation in the West Midlands;
- Tony Jenner, Regional Dental Adviser to the North West NHS Executive, who launched the new BFS briefing Dental health inequalities in the United Kingdom); and
- Professor Phil Holloway, Emeritus Professor of Children’s Dentistry, University of Manchester, who launched the new BFS briefing Dental fluorosis in perspective.
Following a lively debate which included serious public health issues relating to water fluoridation, and the National Pure Water Association’s latest conspiracy theory about a link between fluoride and the atomic bomb, the meeting was closed by BFS President Baroness Fisher.
Lady Fisher concluded with an impassioned pledge that the campaign calling for action on water fluoridation to end dental health inequalities will continue as long as the children of Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, and Inner London are denied the benefits of water fluoridation which the children of Birmingham have enjoyed for over 30 years.
E-mail requests for copies of the two new British Fluoridation Society briefings to: bfs@liv.ac.uk |
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