THE practice manager at a Bolton dentist has launched a campaign to fight childhood tooth decay after witnessing the suffering it can cause.

Lucie Howard, aged 23, says she sees children visiting the Silverwell Dental Surgery in pain on a daily basis and is keen to do something about it.

She has teamed up with Fixers, a charity which gives young people a voice, to get her message across

She said: “Every day at work we see children in pain with dental decay who have to go to hospital to have their teeth taken out.

“It makes me feel quite upset because it can be prevented.”

Lucie said that sugar is to blame, explaining that parents need to limit their children’s consumption to four times a day.

She added: “The problem is that most parents think that brushing their children’s teeth twice a day is enough, but in actual fact it also has a lot to do with the amount of sugar they eat during the day. Grazing throughout the day is one of the worst things that you can do because the teeth are constantly getting attacked by sugar, and that’s what we call a sugar attack.”

“When you graze on food your mouth can’t neutralise the acid, so that’s when holes happen.

“We try and say limit the frequency of sugar to four times a day.

“Parents need to know that it’s the frequency of sugar not the amount of sugar that their children are eating that’s the problem.’

The North West is one of the worst regions in England for tooth decay among children.

Figures from Public Health England show that a third of five-year-olds have tooth decay in the North West as opposed to a fifth in the South East. The national average is around one in four.

Dr Deborah Moore, from the University of Manchester’s School of Dentistry, is supporting Lucie’s campaign.

She says that tooth extraction due to decay is the biggest reason that children are admitted to hospital.

She said: ‘The message is to reduce sugar intake, both for the benefit of general health and oral health.”

Fixers works with young people aged 16-25 across the UK by providing them with professional resources to help them campaign on issues they feel strongly about.

The charity has helped more than 19,000 youngsters across the UK to have a voice in their community on issues such as cyber-bullying, self-harm, suicide or transphobia.

For more information visit www.fixers.org.uk