(To watch the full press conference with sign language interpretation, click here.)

The Oral Health Action Plan will be implemented next year in response to various strategic recommendations of the related working group, the Government announced today.

It made the announcement as it released the final report of the Working Group on Oral Health & Dental Care today.

Given that it agrees with the recommendation directions of the working group, the Government formulated a corresponding Oral Health Action Plan to adopt the strategies of widely promoting among citizens across all age groups prevention-oriented primary oral healthcare while providing essential dental care services targeting underprivileged groups.

In accordance with the strategy of developing community-wide preventive primary oral healthcare, the action plan covers piloting risk assessment and oral hygiene instruction services at certain District Health Centres/District Health Centre Expresses, introducing preventive dental services for preschool children, launching the Primary Dental Co-care Pilot Scheme for Adolescents (PDCC) under co-payment arrangements, encouraging citizens to receive regular oral check-ups, and encouraging the elderly to make good use of Elderly Health Care Vouchers for seeking oral check-ups.

During a press conference today, Deputy Secretary for Health Eddie Lee elaborated on the PDCC scheme.

“For this PDCC programme, the fixed subsidy by the Government is $200 per patient, and the reference or recommended level for the co-payment is $200. That means in future for adolescents joining this programme to enjoy scaling services, they are only required to pay $200.

“For other services in this programme, if (they are) not covered by our subsidised services, meaning health check-ups and scaling, anything on top of that, the participating dentist could work it out with the patient.”

But in order to join the scheme, Mr Lee made it clear that the Government will set a requirement for the participating dentists.

He explained that they need to state their prices for subsequent services, such as for extractions or fillings, to ensure full transparency so that participating patients could make an informed choice.

According to the strategy of providing essential dental services targeting underprivileged groups, the action plan will take forward measures to launch the Community Dental Support Programme next year in an effort provide dental services for underprivileged groups, to continue streamlining the arrangements of dental services of the General Public Session of the Department of Health which plans to launch an online registration system on December 30, and to continue expanding special care dental services to further cover groups with other disabilities or special needs.

Also today, the Department of Health released the Report of Oral Health Survey 2021, which was conducted between 2021 and 2023.

As revealed by the survey results, various oral health-related public health measures implemented by the Government over the years have effectively improved citizens' oral health.

Apart from stating that the Government observed a general decline in tooth decay and a continuous increase in tooth retention among the elderly, the survey results also revealed that the tooth decay level among Hong Kong children aged five and 12 and the proportion of elderly people with complete tooth loss compares very favourably with global levels.

Nevertheless, the survey revealed that citizens still face a risk of having dental diseases and tooth loss, stressing that strengthening of prevention is required.