EXPLORING THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND FOR DENTISTRY IN AFRICA – AN OPINION PIECE

Abstract

By 2050, it is estimated that a quarter of the world’s population will be African. Please stop and consider this. In 25 years - within my life span - one in four people will  be African. 2.5 billion people. Double the current and projected population of China. Moreover, 37% of thepopulation will be under the age of 18, the ideal age for orthodontics. Sitting through the graduation ceremony of one of  Ghana’s most elite schools and hearing these statistics, I felt breathless with the awareness of the responsibility and the opportunity that this holds for dentistry in Africa. The dentistry that we teach today will account for a substantial proportion of the dentistry practiced worldwide. It is easy to point to increasing dental diseases, rising awareness of oral health, and advancements in dental technology as the key factors for growth, but as dental practitioners, researchers, and educators in Africa, what are we doing to position ourselves for this avalanche? For example, as an orthodontist, the retention regimes currently prescribed and taught globally are largely ineffective for the African cohort I treat. It is unequivocal that the typical features of an African malocclusion are more prone to relapse from midline diastemas to habit-induced bimaxillary proclination and anterior open bites. My revised retention protocol, whilst appearing significantly more effective clinically in my hands, needs to be researched, published, and shared on an international stage to add to the knowledge base, not to dispel the fact that orthodontics in the aforementioned malocclusion types is inherently unstable, but to give guidance on how to better retain these cases from initial planning to execution. Because in 25 years, a significant number of orthodontic cases worldwide will be in this population grouping. This issue of the Ghana Dental Journal has an intriguing study on retention post orthodontic treatment.