Dental Caries Status of Karen Hill Tribe Students in Thailand

Introduction: Karen is hill tribe people who inhabit along the forestry mountain area in Thailand. Because their living area is conserved as national forest, mostly all adulterate exposure was prohibited to enter the area and then refrained from their daily life. Once-a-year dental mobile unit is only source of dental care for this people. There has never been report about dental status of this group in literatures.

Objective: To assess dental caries status of Karen students aged 4-20 years who live in conserved forest area of Thailand.

Methods: Oral health examination form and methodology as described by WHO (1986) was used to evaluate dental health status of Karen students. Results of the examination were analysed by descriptive statistics. Comparisons of the statistics to national status were done by one sample t test.

Results: Dental status of 430 students who live in 6 villages were examined. Mean DMFT of students aged under 6, 6-12, and over 12 years old were 0.1±0.05, 0.78±0.10, and 2.08±0.27 consecutively. Primary teeth dmft of under 6 year-old children is 2.44±0.34. Caries free proportion for the 3 groups are 39.0, 42.7, and 53.1%.

Conclusions: Even there are few exposures to dental caries risk factors, dental status of Karen students is worse than mean National status especially in younger generation. The results indicated that dental prevention scheme is necessary for rural people of Thailand.