CALOOCAN, Philippines: According to the World Health Organization, 514 million children have caries of the primary dentition. Additionally, data from 2021 shows that early childhood caries (ECC) affects almost half of preschool children worldwide. Official surveys from the Philippines have reported consistently high prevalence rates of ECC for 5-year-olds, but the rate for younger children has not been well documented. Concerned by this lack of data, researchers have recently investigated the prevalence of ECC in the country in children under 2 years old. They found that nearly a third of the children examined suffered from ECC.