Minamidaito Island is a rural village and it is difficult for the villagers to have a chance to receive dental treatment because of transportation difficulty.
So the Department of Health of the Okinawa prefecture and eight dental shcools in Japan proper work in close cooperation to provide dental treatment using mobile units to the people of the islands in Okinawa. We compared the oral state of the schoolchildren in 1979 with that in 1968 when the staff of the dental mobile units visited the Minamidaito Island for the first time and found the following findings:
1) No marked difference was found in the prevalence of DMF.
2) Decayed tooth rate was decreased and the filled tooth rate was increased in 1979.
3) The number of schoolchildren who answered “I have a toothache now” was decreased remarkably in 1979 compared with eleven years ago, and this was supposed to be the result of 2) .
4) We feel keenly that primary prevention was needed in the isolated islands where dental care was difficult to receive like in the Minamidaito Island.