Officials and dignitaries from our Member States
Directors and members of the WHO Collaborative Centres
Partners, colleagues and friends
Good morning and welcome to this webinar to commemorate World Oral Health Day 2025. Our focus today is on the role of the oral health workforce in preventing oral cancer, through risk reduction and early detection.
Sadly, our WHO South-East Asia region has the highest burden of oral cancer among all WHO regions. It is the leading cancer among males in our region, and our age-standardized incidence rates for males and females are more than double the global average. Our mortality rate from oral cancer is also the highest in the world.
In South-East Asia, we are also unfortunately major consumers of proven carcinogens causing oral cancer, such as tobacco or areca nut. A recent analysis revealed that half of all oral cancer cases in our region is attributable to smokeless tobacco or areca nut consumption. This shows us the number of cases that could be prevented if these habits were eliminated from the population.
The scientific evidence emphasises the potential impact of behavioural interventions to address such risk factors, including quitting use of tobacco and alcohol. Evidence also indicates that clinical oral examinations for potentially malignant disorders, along with referral linkages for timely management, as effective.
These interventions are only possible through the oral health workforce, and without them risk reduction and early detection would not be possible.
I am very pleased that we have designed this webinar to get a deeper understanding of the regional burden of oral cancer, and best practices for its prevention. We anticipate that you will help inform actionable strategies for national oral health programmes, and integrating early detection and prevention into existing programmes.
I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that WHO SEARO is also working on formulating a Regional Roadmap to control smokeless tobacco and areca nut use. Through this, we will provide technical support to our member states with regionally relevant approaches to address the burden of oral cancer. Stakeholder consultation for the same will be conducted soon, and we look forward to your valuable inputs.
I am pleased to see that we have a wide range of stakeholders participating in our webinar today, including from national oral health programmes, national NCD and cancer programmes, and oral health workforce organizations.
I thank you all for being here, and hope that you have an active and meaningful exchange of ideas and experience. I look forward to being appraised of the outcomes.
Thank you.