Educate Dont Fluoridate

Educate Dont Fluoridate is a Top of the South group with a Facebook page and database of around 460 people resident in the Nelson region. Co Convenor Judy Crowe is an elected member of the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. Educate Don't Fluoridate wishes to express it's concerns to media following Minister Coleman's announcement yesterday. Please see below:

Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman's announcement that the Government will fund $12 million for Councils to add industrial waste fluoride to the country's water supplies rather than commit to working at grass roots level with communities to help vulnerable children is an indictment on our Ministry of Health.

Educate Dont Fluoridate has championed a NZ tailored oral health education programme based on Denmark's Nexo which commences when a child's first tooth erupts. Denmark has the lowest rate of dental caries in the world (WHO statistics 2015) and they have never fluoridated their water. We have spoken with politicians from all parties and presented to the Select Committee at Parliament but what we have said has fallen on deaf ears. Politicians have chosen to shun the world's most successful oral health education programme in favour of an outdated practice introduced into New Zealand more than sixty years ago.

It is time our government stopped listening to industry lobbyists and big business and paid attention to Maori, Pasifika and other vulnerable children. District Health Boards are failing to identify and follow up children who are at high risk. This leads not only to costly hospital admissions for oral surgery but it ignores the immense suffering of these children. Poor oral health is related to poverty and ignorance, not the lack of fluoride in drinking water. No amount of fluoride will help these children whose consumption of sugar sweetened beverages can only be addressed through oral health education.

Minister Coleman needs to look beyond the weak science of the RSNZ report endorsed by Professors Gluckman and Skeggs. This report was largely funded by the Ministry of Health. Their bid to uphold a pro fluoridation stance demonstrates their willingness to risk the health of our population, never having conducted a single study on the risks of fluoridation of our water supplies.

The Health (Water Fluoridation) Amendment Bill is a violation of the fundamental right of every citizen's freedom to choose in matters concerning their own health. When a government wields the power that mandatory fluoridation would impose then that redefines people as chattels or property of the state.

​We have since heard that NZ First intend opposing the Bill at it's second reading. A sure vote winner for this party right across New Zealand.​

Judy Crowe and Cynthia McConville
Co Convenors
Educate Dont Fluoridate