LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

other health care professionals about the medical choices you might have in the future. Discussing end-of-life can make it easier to understand and less frightening. We can accept it as something that happens to us all.”

Advance care plans can be completed online at www.advancecareplanning.org.nz, or a plan template can be downloaded to complete later. There are also a number of free resources to help you think about and prepare your advance care plan. /www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/ health-statistics-and-data-sets/oral-healthdata-and-stats/age-5-and-year-8-oral-healthdata-community-oral-health-service).

The latest available data are from 2016. The ministry provides data for all 5-yearolds and 12-year-olds, separated as to fluoridated water supplies and nonfluoridated.

The 2016 data report evidence, as have the data from earlier years, that there is little or no benefit accruing to our children from the fluoridation of their water supply.

Given this reality, why should taxpayers and/or ratepayers fund this expensive exercise, especially in that it is also absolutely unacceptable to add medications to public water supplies? “integrated and holistic well-being of the water” by putting “the health and well -being of the water at the forefront” of all their freshwater management decisions. In addition, councils are now required “to make or change plans to achieve the objective, noting the connection between fresh water and the broader environment; and the role of community values when setting freshwater objectives and limits”.

Councils must give greater urgency to implementing this standard: in our climate crisis era of unprecedented water