ALL Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain in Edo State, Prof. Oserheimen Osunbor; governorship candidate in 2020, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu; and others have honoured a Consultant Orthodontist of University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Prof. Idia Ize-Iyamu, at inaugural lecture.
The lecturer, who is wife of Pastor Ize-Iyamu, bemoamed the dearth of orthodontists (dentists, who specialise in straightening crooked teeth) in Nigeria, saying the 70 practitioners were inadequate for over 200 million Nigerians.
The lecture: “The Magic of Transformation: Blessed Are Ye That Weep Now, For Ye Shall Laugh.”
She quoted the Nigeria Association of Orthodontists (NOA), which put the ratio as one orthodontist to 2.7 million people, as at 2019.
She noted the figure was in sharp contrast to the United States’, with one orthodontist to 5,054 people, with encouraging figures in Europe.
The consultant orthodontist urged policy makers to formulate plans to incorporate the poor in the society, so that interventions that could transform a smile, were made available in select health facilities, while calling on the Federal Government to set up special hospitals, to take care of the children with craniofacial defects.
She advocated that the suggested special hospitals should be free for such children, so as to encourage those who decided to hide, as a result of shame and inability to afford the cost of treatment, to be attended to, which according to her, must include orthodontic treatment for patients with cleft lips and palate, and for those with severe handicapping malocclusions that could affect their social and mental states.
Prof. Ize-Iyamu insisted that funding should be made through special interventions, for the special groups of patients.
Narrowing it to Edo, she revealed that there were just six trained orthodontists in the state, out of which three are professors of orthodontics.
The professor of orthodontics lamented that the six trained orthodontists in Edo had been serving a population of over 3,233,366, representing a ratio of approximately 1:539,000, which she described as grossly inadequate for the management of orthodontic problems in children and adults.