Indicators for oral health and their implications for industrialized nations

The World Health Organization's adoption in 1979 of 'health for all by the year 2000' as a worldwide target promoted the formulation of specific oral health goals by the Fédération Dentaire Internationale in 1981. Such goals are useful to governments and the private professional sector as a focus for programme planning and implementation and as a means of measuring progress. Recent evidence that caries prevalence is already declining in some industrialized nations, including the USA, suggests that most developed countries will meet or surpass the goals adopted by the FDI by the year 2000. However, keeping these trends moving in the right direction will require a sustained effort on the part of both the public and the private sector.