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Han: Oral health and the war crisis
Editorial

Journal of Korean Academy of Oral Health 2017; 41(3): 163-164.

Published online: 30 September 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11149/jkaoh.2017.41.3.163

Oral health and the war crisis

Dong Hun Han

Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Korean Academy of Dental Health

Copyright © 2017 by Journal of Korean Academy of Oral Health

Journal of Korean Academy of Oral Health

(open-access):

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
It is a terrifying world. Nobody knows where the US military response to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear tests will end. Both sides assert that they are fully prepared to fight a war. In this Autumn, our uneasiness is increased by the fact that we live in Korea. There is a great difference between watching a war from another country, on TV or the Internet, and to experiencing war in the place where we live. War causes a deep and long-lasting injury to the bodies.
A recent study found that the level of health in 2010 was reduced for people born before 1951, when the Korean War was at its peak. In other studies, the edentulous risk of the socioeconomic sub-strata among 1946-1962 births was higher than that among 1920-1945 births. This leads to the suspicion that the experience of warfare during early childhood can increase tooth loss in the elderly. War can have a direct impact on the physical and mental health of children, because it leads to malnutrition and the destruction of health care systems. Moreover, the experiences of infants and children in war can affect their health by causing problems with their ability to cope with the environment, even in adulthood and old age.
It may not be easy to agree with the opinion that fear of war or war may have an impact on oral health. However, since war-related experiences clearly can affect oral health over time, efforts to maintain peace can be one way to protect the oral health of a population at risk from war and massive violence. Those who are interested in the oral health of the population should be interested in deterring war.
September 2017
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