The bulging bowl with chocolate candies looks like a cute contradiction between white cuddly toys in the shape of molars.

"Nutrition for the nerves," says Martina Basile, dental assistant at the Frankfurt Health Department.

"I stand by that." After all, even an oral hygiene expert is not forbidden to eat chocolate.

However, proper dental care is important afterwards.

And Basile can tell a lot about them.

Almost as if a switch had been flipped, it gushes out of her.

She explains the cleaning technique - "Cleaning the occlusal surfaces, outer surfaces and inner surfaces is important," she says.

And with a stern look, she reminds you to change your toothbrush regularly.

"This must not be a mop."

Marie Lisa Kehler

Deputy head of the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

She hasn't given this little lecture to anyone since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Her own children, now young adults, have outgrown the age at which supervised tooth brushing is on the agenda.

She has long since left the elementary and secondary schools where she used to give lectures and check children's dental status with a dentist.

This field of activity has been almost completely idle in recent months - with fatal consequences, as Basile fears.

She assumes that many children whose parents neglect regular visits to the dentist have developed tooth decay and damage that is already known has not been treated.

Reporting is now done digitally

But Basile and her colleagues can only speculate.

The team that actually takes care of the dental health of students has been needed elsewhere in recent months.

The dental assistant has been working in the "case entry" department since the outbreak of the pandemic.

She and her team receive the positive PCR results from the various laboratories.

Martina Basile remembers that at the beginning it was even done on paper.

The documents piled up in the office.

That has changed.

Reporting is now done digitally.

However, according to Basile, all laboratories work with their own templates.

The relevant CT value, which provides information about how high the viral load is, is always hidden somewhere else on the paper.

Basile must separate newly reported cases from those that have previously been reported.

Cases of people trying to get out of quarantine, for example.

The data of the newly infected are then forwarded to the Robert Koch Institute and internally to the department for index case processing, i.e. to the colleagues who contact the infected.

As Basile speaks, her inbox fills up.

At peak times, there were 600 reports a day.

"You can compare it a bit with assembly line work," says Basile.

And yet she likes coming to her new job every morning.

Because the collegial cohesion is a special one, the employees of all departments pay meticulous attention to compliance with the distance rules, but have nevertheless moved closer together.

Back to the schools

Martina Basile has experienced first-hand that behind every case that is entered there can be a story, sometimes a difficult fate. She herself fell ill with Covid-19 in spring 2021. Her husband and parents were also infected. While the forty-nine-year-old was going through a mild course of the disease, her father had to be treated in intensive care and her husband had to be treated in the normal Covid ward for many days. "I remember the helplessness," she says. Since then, the view of her work has changed. “Up until then, I had only entered the data. I didn't know the stories behind it. Suddenly we were one of those stories. That got me thinking.”

Nevertheless: her longing increases to finally be able to fulfill the tasks she is passionate about again. It could start again on Monday. At least in theory. Four members of the twenty-strong dental team are set to resume work in the schools. A priority list was created for this purpose. Those schools in which many children with dental problems were registered before the outbreak of the pandemic should be contacted first. Basile doesn't yet dare to look forward to the expected change. The pandemic has taught her not to make plans. The first visits to the schools could be a kind of reality check. It's about getting a picture of the situation.

Because Martina Basile fears that some students who complained about caries before the outbreak of the pandemic could now have even bigger problems.

For many parents, the loss of school visits means that a control and alarm instance has been lost.

While visiting the dentist was not a matter of course in some households before, the pandemic will have exacerbated the situation.

Basile also suspects that many students nibbled more during the homeschooling and lockdown period than before - without paying attention to whether and how their teeth were brushed.

Kind of a cry for help

The visits of dentists and dental assistants in the schools was always an attempt to sensitize the parents to the topic.

If tooth decay is noticed, the doctors give a letter to take home.

The health department cannot force families to act.

Through the previous regular contact with the students, up to eight times during primary school alone, an attempt is made to convey a certain understanding and urgency.

Some schools even sent a kind of call for help to the office.

According to Basile, many teachers report problems with their students' teeth.

According to them, many resident dentists paint a less dramatic picture.

But she is convinced that only those parents and their children who take the subject seriously come to them anyway.