The use of professionally administered topical fluorides depends on the availability of trained dental personnel and is a
relatively costly approach to prevent dental caries at a community level. In most of the low- and lower-middle-income countries in Asia, the dental workforce is small relative to population size. The dentist-to-population ratio is usually less than 1:10,000 (Beaglehole et al., 2009), and the figure is particularly low in rural areas. In these countries, formally trained dental auxiliary personnel, such as dental hygienists and therapists, are either not available or exist in only small numbers. The lack of an adequate dental workforce and a well-developed dental care delivery system seriously limits the use of professionally administered fluorides to prevent dental caries.