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BACKGROUND: Egypt is one of the most populated countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region with historically large numbers of trained professionals providing services in and outside the country. Data about dentist availability are needed to plan for workforce production and training. AIMS: We assessed dentist availability in Egypt including (1) changes over 20 years; (2) spatial distribution; and (3) association with supply, potential demand for care and economic conditions. METHODS: In an ecological study (1995-2014), we used data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. The outcome variable was dentist availability (dentists per 1000 population). The explanatory variables were: (1) population size; (2) number of dental graduates; (3) previous dentist availability; (4) increase in wages; and (5) percentage of population migrating internally seeking jobs. We assessed variation in availability using statistical process control and spatial autocorrelation. The impact of explanatory variables was assessed using general linear models with partial η2 to measure effect size. RESULTS: Dentists per 1000 population were randomly distributed over the country and the ratio reached 0.18 in 2014, indicating a shortage despite the increasing number of dental graduates since 1995 (667.1%). Previous dentist availability (η2 = 0.60) and increase in wages (η2 = 0.48) had the greatest impact on dentist availability. CONCLUSIONS: Egypt faces a problem of dentist shortage that has not been offset by the increase in dental graduates. Improving the economic conditions and incorporating health care into the national development plan may improve the situation.

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BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Monitoring oral diseases is needed to allocate resources, plan health services and train dental workforce. Caries is one of the oral diseases most commonly included in oral health surveillance systems. The present study assessed (1) caries data availability in the administrative regions of Saudi Arabia and (2) factors associated with this availability. METHODS: We collected caries data in the period 2008-2018 in Saudi Arabia (outcome variable). The explanatory variables included region-level factors: (a) socio-economic indicators (percentage of individuals with university education, percentage of category A governorates, percentage of owned houses, households with computers, internet and smart phones) and, (b) oral health research potential indicators (number of Dental Public Health (DPH) specialists, Ministry of Health (MoH) dentist to population ratio and number of dental schools). ArcGIS was used for data visualization and logistic regression was used for analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-two studies provided caries data for 46.2% of the regions which were inhabited by 84.7% of the population. Region-level data availability was associated with the number of dental schools (OR = 1.63) with 61.5% of the regions correctly classified. More regions were correctly classified when population to MoH dentist ratio (76.9%) and the number of DPH specialists (92.3%) were included. CONCLUSIONS: Caries data were available for half of the administrative regions in Saudi Arabia and data availability was associated with higher number of dental schools. The presence of DPH specialist provided the critical mass to collect caries data.

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OBJECTIVES: To assess the relationship between health care system and economic factors and early childhood caries (ECC) data availability and prevalence. METHODS: We estimated ECC data for 193 United Nations countries from studies published between 2007 and 2017. We obtained other variables from the World Health Organization and the World Bank databases. We assessed association with ECC data availability by using logistic regression and with ECC prevalence by using linear regression. RESULTS: We included 190 publications from 88 (45.6%) countries. The mean ECC prevalence was 23.8% and 57.3% in children younger than 36 months and children aged 36 to 71 months, respectively. The odds of ECC data availability were significantly higher for countries with more physicians and more dentists. In children younger than 36 months, ECC prevalence was associated with universal health coverage (B = -6.56). In children aged 36 to 71 months, it was associated with growth of gross national income (B = 0.27). CONCLUSIONS: Countries with more physicians and more dentists were more likely to have ECC data. Among those with data, countries with higher economic growth had higher ECC prevalence.

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