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Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste

OBJECTIVE: Dental caries remains the most common disease worldwide and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a most effective preventive public health measure to prevent it. Changes in diets following globalization contribute to the development of dental caries in emerging economies. The aim of this pap...

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Autores principales: Goldman, Ann S, Yee, Robert, Holmgren, Christopher J, Benzian, Habib
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2443131/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18554382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-4-7
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author Goldman, Ann S
Yee, Robert
Holmgren, Christopher J
Benzian, Habib
author_facet Goldman, Ann S
Yee, Robert
Holmgren, Christopher J
Benzian, Habib
author_sort Goldman, Ann S
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Dental caries remains the most common disease worldwide and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a most effective preventive public health measure to prevent it. Changes in diets following globalization contribute to the development of dental caries in emerging economies. The aim of this paper is to compare the cost and relative affordability of fluoride toothpaste in high-, middle- and low-income countries. The hypothesis is that fluoride toothpaste is not equally affordable in high-, middle- and low-income countries. METHODS: Data on consumer prices of fluoride toothpastes were obtained from a self-completion questionnaire from 48 countries. The cost of fluoride toothpaste in high-, middle- and low-income countries was compared and related to annual household expenditure as well as to days of work needed to purchase the average annual usage of toothpaste per head. RESULTS: The general trend seems to be that the proportion of household expenditure required to purchase the annual dosage of toothpaste increases as the country's per capita household expenditure decreases. While in the UK for the poorest 30% of the population only 0.037 days of household expenditure is needed to purchase the annual average dosage (182.5 g) of the lowest cost toothpaste, 10.75 days are needed in Kenya. The proportion of annual household expenditure ranged from 0.02% in the UK to 4% in Zambia to buy the annual average amount of lowest cost toothpaste per head. CONCLUSION: Significant inequalities in the affordability of this essential preventive care product indicate the necessity for action to make it more affordable. Various measures to improve affordability based on experiences from essential pharmaceuticals are proposed.
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spelling pubmed-24431312008-07-04 Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste Goldman, Ann S Yee, Robert Holmgren, Christopher J Benzian, Habib Global Health Research OBJECTIVE: Dental caries remains the most common disease worldwide and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a most effective preventive public health measure to prevent it. Changes in diets following globalization contribute to the development of dental caries in emerging economies. The aim of this paper is to compare the cost and relative affordability of fluoride toothpaste in high-, middle- and low-income countries. The hypothesis is that fluoride toothpaste is not equally affordable in high-, middle- and low-income countries. METHODS: Data on consumer prices of fluoride toothpastes were obtained from a self-completion questionnaire from 48 countries. The cost of fluoride toothpaste in high-, middle- and low-income countries was compared and related to annual household expenditure as well as to days of work needed to purchase the average annual usage of toothpaste per head. RESULTS: The general trend seems to be that the proportion of household expenditure required to purchase the annual dosage of toothpaste increases as the country's per capita household expenditure decreases. While in the UK for the poorest 30% of the population only 0.037 days of household expenditure is needed to purchase the annual average dosage (182.5 g) of the lowest cost toothpaste, 10.75 days are needed in Kenya. The proportion of annual household expenditure ranged from 0.02% in the UK to 4% in Zambia to buy the annual average amount of lowest cost toothpaste per head. CONCLUSION: Significant inequalities in the affordability of this essential preventive care product indicate the necessity for action to make it more affordable. Various measures to improve affordability based on experiences from essential pharmaceuticals are proposed. BioMed Central 2008-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC2443131/ /pubmed/18554382 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-4-7 Text en Copyright © 2008 Goldman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Goldman, Ann S
Yee, Robert
Holmgren, Christopher J
Benzian, Habib
Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title_full Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title_fullStr Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title_full_unstemmed Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title_short Global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
title_sort global affordability of fluoride toothpaste
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2443131/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18554382
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-8603-4-7
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