The New Zealand Dental Association report found 90% of parents said their children had “good” to “excellent” oral health, but only 57% of children reached age five without tooth decay.<\/p>\n
Only 63% brushed twice a day with fluoride toothpaste.<\/p>\n
The stats are part of the association’s 2026 Oral Health Report Card which looks at every aspect of dental health \u2014 from family bathrooms to operating theatres. <\/p>\n
The data suggested parents might have a “false sense of security” about their children’s health.<\/p>\n
“…this high level of parental confidence may not accurately reflect underlying oral health status,” the report said.<\/p>\n
National oral health report finds worrying gaps in the care of New Zealand children.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
The association’s president, and working dentist, Dave Excell said parents might be surprised about how much they need to be involved.<\/p>\n
“I think sometimes parents think they can just leave their kids to do it themselves but they really need to be supervised up to the age of eight or nine, using a fluoride toothpaste, making sure they are doing a good job,” he said.<\/p>\n
But solving the problem was not just on parents.<\/p>\n
Other statistics showed there were failings across the system \u2014 one example was that not enough children and teens were accessing free checkups they are entitled to every year.<\/p>\n
There were likely several reason why \u2014 including wait lists, which were a post code lottery.<\/p>\n
Children and teens in Hawke’s Bay and Tairawhiti waited longer for dental appointments than anywhere else.<\/p>\n
It was important to solve the problem which could have lifelong consequences, Excell said.<\/p>\n
“You have to ask the question why at five years old, 43% of our children have got a completely preventable disease already,” he said.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The 2026 Oral Health Report Card looks at every aspect of dental health \u2014 from family bathrooms to operating theatres. (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n
At the most serious end of the scale, about 4500 children were on the waiting list for hospital level dental care.<\/p>\n
That number had got smaller by about 1000 over the past year but it was still too high, Excell said.<\/p>\n
“Somewhere in the region of 7500 to 8000 children every year need a general anaesthetic to have their teeth sorted out and again that is just not acceptable in a country like ours,” he said. <\/p>\n
Today’s report aimed to bring together a number of measures, to get a snap shot of the country’s oral health.<\/p>\n
It was hoped that it could be used as a launching point for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parents are far too optimistic about how well their kids are looking after their teeth, and it is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[134,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-559759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}