Overview

Basic oral health surveys provide a sound basis for assessing the current oral health status of a population and its future needs for oral health care. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a long tradition of epidemiological survey methodology, which includes a description of the diagnostic criteria that can be readily understood and applied in public health programmes worldwide.

The WHO manual Oral Health Surveys – Basic Methods has encouraged countries to conduct standardized oral health surveys that are comparable internationally. The WHO Global Oral Health Data Bank collates the data gathered through country surveys on the burden of oral disease and WHO recommended statistical analysis on key indicator age groups of children and adults.

This manual aims to encourage national oral health survey planners to standardize measurements of oral diseases and conditions that are important for planning and evaluation of oral health programmes, as well as to ensure the comparability of data collected in a wide range of environments. It does this by applying the WHO global approach to chronic disease surveillance to an operational model for integration of oral health into chronic disease surveillance systems.