121 Review Article Int J Clin Prev Dent 2014;10(3):121-126ㆍhttp://dx.doi.org/10.15236/ijcpd.2014.10.3.121 ISSN (Print) 1738-8546ㆍISSN (Online) 2287-6197 A Review of Indonesia’s Dental Health - Past, Present and Future Anton Rahardjo, Diah Ayu Maharani Department of Preventive and Public Health Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Access to dental health care markedly improves citizens’ dental health status, which in turn improves the national quality of life. This paper aims to review the literatures of the Indonesian Dental Health. All of the related factors that influence dental health were described from 1995 to 2013. Economic and geographic barriers to access dental care still exist in Indonesia. Periodic evaluation on government policy is essential to develop an adequate dental health care system, which then could improve outcomes of the national dental health status. Keywords: oral health, dental care, Indonesia Copyright ⓒ 2014. Korean Academy of Preventive Dentistry. All rights reserved. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Corresponding author Anton Rahardjo Department of Preventive and Public Health Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Indonesia, Jalan Salemba Raya No.4 Jakarta10430, Indonesia. Tel: +62-818164623, Fax: +62-212303257, E-mail: antonrahardjo@gmail.com Received September 22, 2013, Revised May 17, 2014, Accepted September 2, 2014 Introduction Indonesia is one of the largest countries in South East Asia. It consists of many islands and is divided into 34 provinces. Based on 2010 census data, the Indonesian population was 237,641,326. Indonesia is the 4th largest country in the world after China, India and the United States [1]. Based on the 2004 Human Development Index, the life quality of Indonesians, as compared to other countries, was still in the intermediate cat- egory [2]. Access to dental health care has a significant impact in improving citizens’ dental health status, which in turn im- proves the national quality of life. Nonetheless, economic and geographic barriers to access dental care still exist in Indonesia [3]. All of the related factors that influence dental health shall be described and analyzed herein. A developed dental health care system could improve outcomes of the national dental health status and should be evaluated periodically. According to the Ministry of Health the programs for improv- ing dental health care in Indonesia involve (1) Developing and increasing the use of specialist dentistry in oral surgery, ortho- dontics and prosthetics in all hospitals; (2) Developing dental health care centers in teaching hospitals and increasing the re- ferral system especially for the elderly; (3) Improving promo- tive oral health care in the community, especially for preschool, school children and pregnant woman in all community health centers through active community participation; (4) Increasing the use of promotive, preventive and simple curative dental health care for school children in all community health centers that have dental facilities; (5) Improving basic dental health care services in community health centers; (6) Increasing the use of systemic fluoridation to prevent caries in provinces with a caries index of more than 3; (7) Improving the skills and knowledge of dentists, dental nurses and dental technicians in community health centers and hospitals [4,5].