Health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said through the MoU, Straumann Group would provide 3,000 packages of complete dental implant treatment worth over RM10 million to those in need.

“In order to ensure the success of the dental implant programme so that it would not lead to any complication, close and continued monitoring by the ministry and commitment from the patients to attend follow-up checkups are very important,” he said in a statement here today.

He said studies showed that between 19% and 65% of patients who received dental implant treatment had mucositis, while between 1% and 47% would suffer from the inflammatory peri-implantitis if they failed to be monitored regularly.

Khairy said the results of the 2010 National Oral Health Survey for Adults revealed that one in four adults in Malaysia had a prosthesis due to tooth loss.

Overall, 45.9% of those who still have teeth needed prosthesis to replace missing teeth, he added.