Malawian primary school children’s oral health self-care promotion, oral health teaching material for teachers. The purpose of this final project was to produce teaching material for Malawian primary school teachers for health promotion and to utilize it in health promotion lessons for children between 6-13 years of age. Aims of this final project were to describe the challenges of children’s oral healthcare in Malawi, describe the criteria for high-quality teaching material and to study evidence based material on children’s oral health promotion. The teaching material was made considering the quality criteria for the Finnish health promotion center. A few oral health promotion exercises and mutual health discussion topics were added to the end of the teaching material.

Due to a lack of resources in health care, oral health promotion is uncommon in Malawi and tooth extraction is the most common procedure. Long distances, lack of knowledge, attitudes and prejudices strongly influence local population’s usage of oral health care services. Therefore, knowledge on oral health promotion should be increased. Oral health habits are easily adopted in the early childhood and, therefore, health promotion should happen in a place that children can easily access, for example schools. Teachers have an important role in school-aged children’s life and work as a link between children and home. That is why it is important that teachers have updated teaching material and knowledge of oral health promotion.

The study was conducted by researches that were found in PubMed, Helka and Metcat databases. We used words as Malawi oral health, oral health education Tanzania and children oral health education Africa in our search. Some of the material was also collected during an international student exchange in September 2010 in Malawi by interviewing and observing local oral health professional, dental therapist teachers and –students. On this literature review was a teaching health material produced and it will be hand over to teacher’s utilization in Malawi.