Dental care for children
Dental care for children is free in Estonia! The Health Insurance Fund covers the cost of dental care for insured persons under 19 years of age. Free dental care is also available for one year after the nineteenth birthday of an individual if the need for treatment was identified during the last visit of the patient before they became 19 years old. The free service must be provided by the same dental care service provider who identified the need for treatment.
Parents play an important role in ensuring the oral health of their children. It is recommended to take your child to a dentist at least once a year: this way, the dentist can advise the child and the parent on the prevention of oral and dental diseases, any diseases are discovered as early as possible, and serious dental disorders can also be prevented.
The mouth of a child requires cleaning from birth. The gums of an infant can be cleaned with a moistened piece of gauze. Once the first baby teeth have erupted, that is the teeth are showing from the gums, they must be cleaned regularly with a brush. Parents should brush the teeth of their children and inspect the quality of the cleaning done by the child at least until the child goes to school. During teeth-brushing, it can be examined what is going on in the mouth of the child – which teeth have erupted, are any teeth loose and about to be replaced, or are there any signs of a disease on the teeth or gums. If everything is fine, you should still see a dentist before the third birthday of the child. However, we advise to already take your child to a dentist at an earlier age.
Parents have the right to choose the dentist of their child. Always make sure that the dentist selected has a contract with the Health Insurance Fund; the list of contractual partners can be found here. If there is no contract, the parent must pay the full amount for the service and this expense will not be compensated by the Health Insurance Fund. The Health Insurance Fund only covers the cost of those services which are included in the list of health care services of the Health Insurance Fund.
It is the obligation of family nurses and school nurses to advise people to make preventive visits to a dentist (refer them to such visits) – this is included in the job description of a family nurse and in the regulation on the work of a school nurse. If a health care service is provided without a parent in attendance – for example, some health care services are organised by the school – the child must be equipped with the consent of a parent.
Research has shown that if an individual has strong and healthy teeth and if their gums are not inflamed by the end of adolescence, they will not require dental care for several decades and annual prophylactic visits to the dentist will suffice. Thus, proper oral hygiene techniques and preventive check-ups for children can help to prevent expenditure on dental care that swallows a significant share of their savings in adulthood.