Bangladesh is a developing country with relatively low health and education levels. For those in rural areas, village doctors with little or no formal training constitute 62% of the healthcare providers. On the other hand, the formally trained providers are occupying a mere 4% of the total health workforce. A survey conducted by Future Health Systems revealed significant deficiencies in treatment practices of village doctors, with a wide prevalence of harmful and inappropriate drug prescriptions. A 2007 study of 1000 households in rural Bangladesh found that direct costs (payment to formal and informal health care providers) and indirect costs (loss of earnings associated with workdays lost due to illness) associated with illness were important deterrents to access health care from qualified healthcare providers.
Therefore, development and implementation of public health services is mandatory to improve the overall health status of our country.
Though a pilot community empowerment tools are currently successfully being implanted in Bangladesh in order to improve uptake and monitoring of public health services, preventive approaches for improving oral health status is still in the darkness. Most people of our country do not know the basics to maintain oral hygiene like- how to brush their teeth, how to do mouthwash or how to use a dental floss.
Understanding the importance to improve this situation, establishment of a health care program ‘Tooth Fairy’ comes in light.