13th September, 2012
Striving for a Guinness World Record in oral hygiene, officials in Lagos state, western Nigeria, have called on 300,000 students to take out their toothbrushes on December 5 and start scrubbing simultaneously at noon.
The current record was set in India on October 9, 2007, when 177,003 people gathered at 380 locations and brushed at the same time, according to guinnessworldrecords.com.
Nigeria wants to shatter that mark, organisers of the Lagos World Record Tootbrushing Challenge said Thursday.
“The idea is to promote and improve the attitude of Nigerians to good oral health habits,” said the project coordinator with Lagos state government, Bakare Lawal.
He further explained that “300,000 students, aged between 10 and 19, are to gather in multiple locations to participate in the competition at exactly 12 noon on December 5.” They will brush for one minute.
Three hundred schools have been asked to participate in Nigeria’s economic capital, one of the world’s largest cities with an estimated population of 15 million people.
The campaign was needed, Lawal said, because “poorly designed dental practices and lack of strong policies have combined to produce unpleasant but avoidable outcomes.”