Method: Permission was obtained from the hospital's Chief Operations Officer to conduct a cross sectional survey. This was in the form of a self-administered questionnaire which was given to all the paediatric health care providers in the Specialist Out-Patients Department of the paediatric hospital. The survey investigated the provider's knowledge and awareness of oral disease, referral characteristics, provision of oral health information, and their opinion of the importance of the child's oral health. Data was entered and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).
Results: Preliminary results indicate that most paediatric health care providers who participated in the survey reported that they referred children who had dental caries, dental abscess, or halitosis to the dental clinic. Most providers stated that they ‘looked in the mouth' as part of their examination. Dental caries was recognized as discoloured enamel or broken teeth. Gum disease as redness and bleeding. Oral hygiene advice was mostly confined to ‘brush the teeth and eat less sweets'. The importance of the child's oral health on a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (very important) was rated in the range of 7 – 10. Conclusion: The health care providers had a good knowledge and clinical recognition of dental caries and gingivitis. They rated the importance of oral health of the child as high to very high and for most providers oral screening formed part of their examination of the child.