Bhubaneswar: The Odisha chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, inaugurated the Annual National Conference of Indian Dental Association(IDA), here on Friday.
Patnaik, addressing the delegates, said that each of the Community Health Centre in the state would have a dental unit with a dental surgeon, infrastructure and adequate equipments. For that the state government recruited 400 dental surgeons from the state budget. He said that the dental surgeons would help in detecting the oral cancer cases in the early stages and their treatments.
Under RBSK programme, dental surgeons have been posted in District Early Intervention Centres. The Centre screens the children to detect dental problems and refer to the dental surgeons.
The chief minister said that steps are being taken to increase seats in MDS to ensure availability of skilled man power in different fields of dentistry. In SCB Medical College, treatment of jaw bone defects is being done with most recent methods of micro, vascular surgery, he added.
Patnaik urged the delegates to focus of innovative research activities to make the oral health services affordable for common people.
The state health minister, Pratap Jena, president of Indian Dental Association, Dr. Visws Puranik, principal of SCB Dental College, Dr. JK Dash, also addressed the inaugural session.
