The local health unit has added five new schools to its fluoride varnish program.
At the January Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health meeting the board approved transferring $66,647 in surplus dollars from 2016 into a fluoride varnish reserve that will fund the program in the five new schools for three years.
The program will cost approximately $22,000 a year.
“Our board of health is very supportive of that fluoride varnish program,” said director of family health Andrea Roberts in an interview.
“They really understand the importance and the value of continuing that program.”
Though the five schools have been identified Roberts said the health unit has not yet gained permission to name them publicly. There is one school in Wellington County, two in Dufferin County and two in Guelph.
All five new schools have been identified as high-risk through the Ontario Public Health standards because 14 per cent or more of the Grade 2 students show two or more decaying teeth, Roberts explained.
“Technically, it could just be one year but we’ve seen those patterns for longer than one year in those schools,” she said.
The five new schools will be joining seven other schools in the health unit’s boundary that are already receiving the fluoride varnish, including two Wellington County schools: Centre Peel Public School in Mapleton Township and Mount Forest’s Victoria Cross Public School.
The original seven schools are funded through the cost-shared mandatory programs budget.
Centre Peel was the pilot school when the program began in 2007, where about 30% of the students had obvious cavities.
Now that number is down to just 5%.
“The trick is that those original seven schools, they’re no longer high-risk schools … because we’ve had an impact with the number of kids with urgent dental needs by using this program, by applying fluoride varnish,” Roberts said.
“But if we were to stop, they would just become high risk again. Fluoride varnish is not a one-time application that does you forever.
“You have to do it regularly in order for it to be affective.”
The health unit goes into the schools two times a year to provide the varnish for free to any student who has received parental consent.
Public health is currently in the process of contacting each school board and setting the program up in the new schools.
Roberts estimated the new schools would be receiving fluoride varnish by late spring or early fall.
