UK children are having almost all their teeth removed due to shocking levels of decay, with poor diet and a lack of dental hygiene to blame, an investigation has found.
Child health experts told a BBC Panorama programme focusing on Sheffield that it is becoming increasingly common for pre-school age children to turn up to hospital with multiple teeth removed.
In one extreme case, a three-year-old child needed 18 of their 20 baby teeth taken out.
The programme heard from experts in physical and mental health, along with academics, who said British children are now on average 7cms shorter than their European counterparts, putting them at further risk of poor health in later life.
Professor Helen Rodd, a paediatric dentist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, said: “We are seeing a certain group of children with really high decay rates, with many, many decayed teeth. And they tend to be younger children in the four to eight age range and they tend to be children living in poverty.
“I saw a child who was three who was having 18 teeth taken out – children have 20 baby teeth, so they were only left with two. That is an extreme example, but it’s not an exceptional thing. We see that from time to time.”
On one Saturday, two of Professor Todd’s colleagues saw 31 children who took out 195 teeth between them, something she described as “a pretty depressing and upsetting situation for the children, their families and the dentists themselves”.
The problem is having a knock-on effect on school attendance with toothache becoming one more of the most common reasons for child absence.
Professor Todd said: “I find it pretty upsetting that children have such awful teeth. It’s going to impact on them now, while they’re having pain and sleepless nights and not being able to eat, sleep or socialise, missing school, but it’s going to impact them throughout their life, because that burden of disease goes with you. Children who have [tooth] decay at a younger age, we know, are two to three times more likely to have decay in their adult teeth.”
Staff at Meadows Nursery said they had incorporated toothbrushing in their daily routines as the children are “more likely to go home and do it as well” as it “becomes routine”.
Leanna Clark told the programme: “Some families are not brushing their teeth. They’re not registered with a dentist. They’re not brushing twice a day. Some children don’t like doing it, so then parents have said ‘oh, we just won’t do it’.”
Labour has promised to “rescue” NHS dentistry, pledging to create 700,000 more urgent appointments and recruit new dentists to areas that need them most.
The British Dental Association has welcomed the party’s commitment to fundamental reform but said that “only a clean break from the discredited, target-based NHS contract fuelling the current access and workforce crises can guarantee a future for the service”.
On June 11, during the election campaign, Sir Keir Starmer said: “I was genuinely shocked and actually angered when I learnt that the most common reason that children have to go into hospital for an operation is to have their teeth taken out because they are rotten. That is intolerable as far as I’m concerned.”
Now in government, the Prime Minister has said that supervised toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds will be introduced targeting areas of highest need.
Poor diet among children is also contributing to appalling obesity rates. One on five children are obese or overweight by the time they start school.
Professor Sally Pearse, Strategic Lead for Early Years at Sheffield Hallam University, said: “It’s not that [parents] don’t know what the right food is to feed their children, but if you’re on a really reduced income it’s very hard to experiment with the healthy fruit and veg which is more expensive than processed foods, and also the risk that your children won’t eat it and you’ve waste that money when budgets are so really tight.”
The average height of UK children is also falling, the programme found, with austerity blamed for the decline since 2014. Professor Michael Marmot, Director of UCL’s Institute of Health Equity, told Panorama: “Five-year-old children in the UK are 7cms shorter on average than five-year-olds in the Netherlands. That’s enormous. And that’s going to predict ill health in later life.”
Nurseries focus on improving diet, while academics in Sheffield work with families to do the same, given children and families on the lowest incomes are 12 times more likely to experience poor health by the time they are 17.
Professor Marmot, whose landmark review in 2010 found improvements to life expectancy have stalled and declined for women in the most deprived 10 per cent of areas, said: “The social conditions in early childhood predict subsequent health of those children, their education, the likelihood of being involved in criminal activities, so investing in social conditions for good early child development is likely to lead to better health; and to greater productivity and a more skilled, more educated workforce. And a better, more social cohesive country. It all starts in early childhood.”
Professor Marmot joined charities who have already called for the removal of the two-child benefit cap, something the Prime Minister has suggested he will not do. Professor Marmot told the programme to the policy effectively “punished” poorer families wanting more children.
The number of children disadvantaged by the cap has reached 1.6 million, up 100,000 on last year according to official figures. About half of them are in families with three children, while a fifth are in families with five or more children. Some 440,000 families are affected by the cap, up 33,000 on last year.
Removing the cap would cost between £3bn and £3.5bn a year. Earlier this month, Sir Keir refused to commit himself to lift the cap, saying his government would prioritise “fiscal responsibility”.
The issue is likely to see the Prime Minister engage in the first big battle with the left of his party. John McDonnell, the former shadow Chancellor, is threatening to amend Labour’s first Budget if it does not scrap the cap, arguing that a majority of the party want it removed.
Panorama: Britain’s Child Health Crisis is on BBC One at 8pm on Monday 15 July