END IOM Addis Ababa Declaration signed

On 17-19 June 2019 Chief Dental Officers from East & Central Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, DR Congo, Sudan) convened in Addis Ababa to strategize how to end the barbaric practice of Infant Oral Mutilation (IOM) within 10 years.

Professor Raman Bedi, Chairman of the Global Child Dental Fund and the Global IOM Campaign said, “IOM is an alarming traditional practice executed upon young infants suffering from diarrhoea and fever, or as a means of preventing these conditions from occurring in a child. Commonly performed in East and Central African countries by local healers, it involves the barbaric gouging out of unerupted baby teeth owing to swelling gums that contains the developing tooth buds, being mistaken for ‘tooth worms’. This practice is the largest child abuse in the dental field.”

The Addis Ababa declaration
The 18 June 2019 Addis Ababa declaration, signed by Chief Dental Officers from Kenya, Tanzania, DR Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan, has reinforced the urgent need to eradicate IOM from the East and Central Africa region within 10 years. They call for all stakeholders within and around the region to support the efforts to eliminate IOM, offer relief from pain and suffering, and improve the quality of health of all children from the communities concerned.

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