President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned, this Monday (8), in Brasilia, the law that includes the National Oral Health Policy, also known as Smiling Brazil, in the Organic Law of Health. With this, access to dental care in the Unified Health System (SUS) becomes mandatory and oral health becomes a right of all Brazilians, guaranteed by law. “Brasil Sorridente is an extraordinary thing because it recovers not the smile, but the dignity of the human being, the pride of the human being”, said the president.
During the ceremony, at the Planalto Palace, Lula highlighted that the promotion of oral health involves access to other services and should start at school, with education and even the work of dentists in the classroom.
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“It’s not just treating at the dentist, it’s the quality of the water that the person will drink, the quality of the food that the person will eat, because if there isn’t this education process and this investment process to improve these things, it’s no use. Programs are often not worth it if people are not educated,” said Lula.
“I want us to have a dentist to go to in the classroom, see all the children in a school. You have to see if the child needs treatment and educate this child from school onwards, so that in 20 or 30 years we can dream of having a society where people can eat meat, I can eat nuts, they can smile, they can even get a boyfriend or girlfriend”, added the president.
Service guarantee
The Brasil Sorridente program was created in 2004, during Lula’s first term in the Presidency, to guarantee free oral health services and combat the difficulty in accessing care for the most vulnerable population and in regions with poor health care. Until then, according to the Presidency, the main dental procedure performed in public services was tooth extraction.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, in 10 years, more than 80 million people were served by the program across the country, receiving the most diverse types of dental care in the promotion of oral health, preventive care and dental recovery.
Approved by the National Congress in November 2022, the law provides for universal, equitable and continuous access to oral health services, which become part of the SUS definitively. Thus, the offer of dental services cannot be interrupted or put in the background by federal, state and municipal managers.
The Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, highlighted that the oral health agenda will also be present in health policies for black and indigenous populations. “Oral health indicators also reveal the existing inequalities in the country and in the black and indigenous population, where we find the worst situations, reflecting what happens in society as a whole”, she said.
According to her, the government will work together to meet all the social determinants of health, such as good food and access to treated and fluoridated water, which also impact oral health.
Oral health care in the SUS is offered in Basic Health Units (UBS), Family Health units, mobile dental units, dental specialty centers and hospitals. In addition to these services, the Brasil Sorridente Program has regional dental prosthesis laboratories.
service expansion
Since the beginning of the government, the Ministry of Health has been working to expand assistance in the Brasil Sorridente Program, with the accreditation of 3,685 new oral health teams and 630 new services and care units. The investment in these new qualifications is BRL 136.87 million in 2023.
With this, more than 10 million Brazilians who did not have access to this care are now reached by the program, totaling 111.6 million people covered. Brazil will then have 33,300 teams working across the country and 5,600 services in operation. The government’s expectation is to reach 59,700 teams by the end of 2026.
In all, 805 Brazilian municipalities were awarded the new oral health services and teams. Of these, 85 municipalities will receive oral health teams for the first time.
Among the new accreditations are 68 different services enabled for Dental Specialty centers throughout Brazil, 19 of which are new units, in addition to 10 new mobile dental units to ensure that care reaches vulnerable and difficult-to-access regions.
The new qualifications also cover 552 new regional dental prosthesis laboratories, which expand the offer of dental prostheses by the SUS and enable phonetic and masticatory rehabilitation and the recovery of citizens’ self-esteem.
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