Challenges in Emergency Oral Health Care Provision in COVID-19 Lockdown Period

Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic denotes an unprecedented public health emergency impacting on health care systems, economies and people across the globe. Health care systems have been grappling with rising burden of COVID-19 that transformed prioritization of treatment services for triaging, risk stratification and emergency treatment provision. Sri Lanka as a lower-middle-income developing country was able to harness its strong public health infrastructure for the prevention and control of COVID-19. Nevertheless, ensuring availability and accessibility to preventive oral health care services to children with high caries risk presented with emergencies such as dental pain becomes a formidable challenge in COVID-19 lock down environment.

 

Objective: The present study explores challenges encountered and benefits obtained by emergency management services offered by National Dental Hospital (Teaching) Sri Lanka for children with high caries risk in the peak of COVID-19 lockdown period.

 

Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study in the Preventive Oral Health Unit (POHU), National Dental Hospital for a period of one month using available records at POHU.

 

Results: Most of the children came due to toothache and the most common treatments were health education and pain relieving.

 

Discussion: Due to the novelty of the problem, guidelines and instructions were not sufficient to overcome the situation. Frequent discussions within the team and with the administrators helped to ease out the problems, to identify the roles and responsibilities and to express new ideas and concerns. Positive attitude of the staff was one key feature highlighted during the period.

 

Conclusion: Relieving pain and providing emergency management was a great service to the patients. Team work and collective approach was significant to address a new challenge. Availability of buffer stocks would facilitate an uninterrupted patient care service.