Children and the elderly

Nowadays, our daily diet contains much more sugar than before, which gives a higher risk of inducing cavity. This problem can be easily solved by brushing your teeth more often. However, there are people who couldn’t brush their tooth very well! For example, young children under 7 years old and the elderly might not be able to clean their tooth thoroughly on their own. Their hands don’t have enough strength neither to hold the toothbrush steadily nor to brush their tooth thoroughly. Especially for the elderly, their immune system is getting weaker, and there might be lots of complications once they have cavity in their mouths, including stroke and other cardiovascular disease. What’s worse, there are many "DINK(Double Income No Kids)" families in our society now, so it makes it more difficult to take good care of their oral health because the young children and the elderly need others’ aids. Consequently, our project provides a good solution to the problem, introducing a way for them to clean their tooth without brushing their tooth.

Moreover, most of the children we met when cooperating with the NYMU Oral Hygiene Social Service Team were afraid of going to the dentists. Despite the pain caused by oral cavities, they were reluctant to go to the dentist because of the terrifying drills.

As for the elderly we chatted with, they were quite interested with our project. One of the grannies who has had Parkinson’s disease for two years was especially delighted when hearing about HOPE. Parkinson’s has made her movements shaky and difficult to move around. “Maybe you can test HOPE on me!” She said jokingly.