Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude, Practice of Oral Hygiene and Prevalence of Dental Caries among School Children in Massawa Sub Zone, Eritrea: Cross Sectional Study

Nazrawi Mehari^*, Berhe Tesfai, Andebrhan Tewelde and Efrem Kahsu

¹Dentist, Dental clinic head, Massawa hospital, Northern Red Sea zone, Ministry of Health, Massawa, Eritrea

²Medical doctor, Medical director, Massawa hospital, Northern Red Sea Zone, Ministry of Health, Massawa, Eritrea

³Epidemiologist, Health Research Division, policy and planning, Ministry of Health, Asmara, Eritrea

⁴Dentist, Zoba Debub, Ministry of Health, Dekemhare hospital, Dekemhare, Eritrea

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Copyright: © 2021  . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Background: Dental caries is the most common chronic infectious disease of childhood caused by the interaction of bacteria and sugary foods on tooth enamel.  The objective of the study was to assess the Knowledge, attitude, oral hygiene practice and the burden of the disease among school children in Massawa sub zone, Eritrea.

Methods: A prospective, cross sectional study with an interviewer administered questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. A systematic random sampling method was used to select the schools and students from Massawa sub zone and dental checkups were done to all the students in the primary and secondary schools of Massawa subzone. CSPro and SPSS softwares were used for data entry and analysis purposes respectively. Results were presented in percent, tables, graphs and P-value.

Results: of the students, 96% had poor knowledge on oral health care, 91% of them believe that brushing teeth prevents caries and 83% practically brush their teeth. About 85% of the students reported that treatment of tooth ache is as important as other organ of the body and 34% of the participant believes that dental problems do not affect general health. Only 31% of the subjects brush their teeth twice a day and 52% of the students have never visited dental clinic. Moreover; 21% of the participants do not care even if they have decayed tooth but 67 % of the students reported visit a dentist when there is toothache. The Prevalence of dental carries on the students was found to be 32.8%.

Conclusion: The students have poor knowledge and positive attitude on oral health care and higher prevalence of dental carries was reported in the sub zone of Massawa; Eritrea. The level of education of the students showed significant association to their knowledge on oral health. 

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