The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a fact sheet, which will come as little surprise to UK GDPs. It shows that oral disease in children and adults is higher among poor and disadvantaged population groups. Risk factors for oral diseases include an unhealthy diet, tobacco use, harmful alcohol use and poor oral hygiene, and social determinants.

Martin Fallowfield, a GDP in Peterborough, has been elected to chair the BDA’s new Principal Executive Committee (PEC).  Also elected as Deputy Chair was Robert Kinloch who is also a GDP, practising near Loch Lomond in Scotland. The third senior key office holder of the PEC will be Judith Husband, who has been elected as Chair of the Education, Ethics, and Dental Team Committee. 

Deborah White, associate professor and director of education at the School of Dentistry at Birmingham, has been elected as the new Chair of the British Dental Association’s Central Committee for Dental Academic Staff (CCDAS) for the 2012/14 triennium. She was Vice Chair of CCDAS in the last triennium. The new Chair of CCDAS will be supported by Jeff Wilson, the newly-elected Vice Chair. Jeff is a senior clinical lecturer in restorative dentistry at Cardiff University Dental School.

Dr Nigel Carter has been appointed an Officer of the Order of the Brritish Empire (OBE) in the Queens Birthday Honours list. He is Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation (BDHF).

Also honoured was Roger Farbey, head librarian of the British Dental Association, who becomes an MBE.

A UN meeting at the end of the month in Uruguay will consider a legally binding agreement which would curb the use of dental amalgam world-wide. If agreed it could be ratified next year. Separately the UK Government led by the Department of the Environment, not Health, has been discussing how the rest of Europe could come in line with those, mainly Scandinavian, countries which have imposed severe restrictions on the use of the material.