THE CIRCULAR NATURE OF DEVELOPMENT

Over the last 30 or more years, there have been repeated calls to establish a minimum package of primary oral health care services in low-resource settings. In the late 80s, there was a call for a “primary health care” approach for addressing access to oral health care, and by the mid 90s, there was a growing body of evidence around the use of the atraumatic restorative technique. In the early 2000s, one of our founding members, Dr Robert Yee, along with other colleagues, defined the “Basic Package for Oral Health Care” (BPOC). One of the key areas of implementation of this project was in Nepal, where the United Mission to Nepal established training for the primary oral health care providers using this training package. The training empowered the providers to offer “oral urgent treatments” using the atraumatic restorative technique, and promoted the use of affordable fluoride toothpastes. Now in 2023, given what we have learned over the last two decades, we are revisiting the BPOC curriculum. It is an honour to have Dr Robert Yee onboard as we review this along with Jevaia Oral Health Care (NGO) and Dr Dilip Prajapati from Dhulikhel Hospital. This will be the inaugural project of the Oral Health Action Network (OHAN).