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Call for national effort to ‘stop the rot’ on child tooth decay

Rotting teeth remain the leading cause of hospital admission among five to nine year olds, new figures reveal.

Although there had been a slight fall in admissions on the previous year, there were still more than double the number of children (23,529) undergoing hospital treatment for tooth decay, than for the second most prevalent cause, acute tonsillitis (10,359).

The figures cover a period almost entirely before lockdown, from April 2019 to the end of March 2020.

Since April 2012, over 350,000 young people have been admitted to hospital with tooth decay, of which 57% were aged between five and nine.

Public Health England’s most recent Oral Health Survey of Five Year Old Children showed that across England as a whole 23.4% of five year old children had visible decay.

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